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Plus: News, advice, programming,
adventures, pokes and reviews.

July 1988

£1.25

The Official Amstrad Home Computing Magazine

Norway' NOK 20.00 Denmark Kr. 33.50 New Zealand NZ$4.05 Rec

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Cali ita sequel.,, i/.r 5

And youll land up flat
on your back .

They called Internationa
Karate '(he greatest Karate
beat tem up ytf {COfllfiftedore
Ano who d?c we to ■argue' 5.

Put ARCHERMACLEAN haiCOffl?

Up with a stunner: A third fighter. An
amazing animated background. New moyes
: deluding double head-kick and a spectacular
backflip), Re-muted must by BOB HUPBARP
And baits!

& 100 T Archer Maclean ■EA 5 E 7 Svstcir 3 Software Ltd

\\ RAMPAGt

me game where the nice
guys don't get a -took in.
Grab your way through Chicago,
M punch up Work, and jump

on San Francisco
Three indescribably nasty characters
whteh bear a nemarltabie likeness to King
Kong, Godi.illa and Wzilf-manj m&id you to
send them cm a. rampage in an enduring 150 days
pi destruction, through SO different dfte*.
TMS @'SKi‘j Rjjy MrivMy Mf£> Co. AHrgfKS pete'VKl
tor-r.soPikK-.

It IAN

K50 FAIL.

In the

jg vigj i ntejtnere jfi - no place ra raj
. io une to thir* - but 100% sharp <
/ there rs 8 way;. IImp Ip die! From the cit
subways to the gangfa nd ghettos, you wi
always encounter the dtsoples or ev
wlitfi mission, it i& to exterminate the onl
rrta n on earth who dares to throw down tn
guantlelin their path - the Renegadi
PIA¥ RENEGADE.. .PLAY WEAI'
UrrjTHd f.'am S3T*rlfl CSrp., 1981.

□rax has sworn
™*able doom on

g Jewelled Gtyunte
lifdfellysted to hi m

Hpweverybi fwt agreed that if a c hai¥tp»on

can be found who « able to defeat his,

cfemonic guardians, tfsc Pftoeei{ Will -N Bt \

tAi released .. . ;■--

Trom the wastelands or the North,, comes an

unknown barbarian, a mighty warrior, wielding h*s broadsword with
deadly jStilJ. ,

Can he vanquish the forces of fonrkness and free the Princess?

ONLY VO U CAN 5 Ay...

' 355 rfdcc Gdflwort 1537

SUPER HITS TOGETHER IN
■ ONE SPECIAL BOX PACK
W AVAILABLE FOR:

STRAD, COMMODORE & SPECTRUM

.ft SPRINT ™

L censed from AJtar Games! 1 original money-spinning coin -op, one or two players
compete fveatHoiwad over eight gruelling tracks arid tocK levels of game difficulty.
Avoid (he harardiand collect golden spanner* which can be traded for vehicle
enihafhClng Custom car features - the *tey to Super Sprint. With detailed animation
and sound effects, Super Sprint brings l he be$T driving excitement ever to be
experienced on htwne computers,

TMi CAta . GiuMraien K)&6 M *><$*.% fejcrwa
CEIeeir-fc MamsSoftWc ltflJ.

ONLY

ALSO AVAILABLE
ON DISK

| The Ultimate

: Warrior KjhUI

REGULARS

News

Mandarin launch success;
CPC prize freeze; computer
conservation; alt the latest
CPC news.

Letters

Disc copiers defended;
moans and groans about
ACU; SD Microsystems
angered by Small Trader's
Pack review.

Adventures

Time and Magik, The
Bard's Tale, Dark Sceptre.

Applications

Advice

David Foster writes about
DDM interface problems,
a KDS printer port patch,
and much more.

Gallup Chart

Ghostbusters makes it two
months at the top.

Hairy Hackers

Fairlight, Ninja, Infiltrator,
Flying Shark and North
Star hacks; Print Master
patch; Cybernoid map.

PROGRAMMING

Reflections

Fast flipping on the CPC
with Cy Noble's reflecting
Rsx.

2 0 Auntie John's
Q Machine Code

What's In the firmware
to help you read your
keyboard?

Basic Tutor

Jeff Walker turns his
attention to the first of the
CPC's graphics commands.

FEATURES

Three in One

Bill Tomlins reveals the
bare facts about the latest
version of Brunword.

Rim Writer

The man responsible for
the Amstrad conversion of
Rimrunner describes how
he survived without sleep
and learned to hate the
Commodore 64.

L$B

Sneak look at the
specifications for the
Amstrad Eurocomputer.

Motion Carried

AiastaSr Scott finds out
what Camel's Windows
Operating System is.

Reader Survey

Yup, it's Editor bashing
time again. Fill 'em in,
post 'em off and we'll
do the rest.

REVIEWS

Enlightenment

Firebird's long awaited
sequel to Druid.

Stairway to Hell

Jaunty ladders and
platforms game from
Power House.

Fruit Machine
Simulator

Code Masters reap the
scrolling fruits of success.

Pirates?

Avast ye landlubbers and
belay the shoot 'em ups
while we take a peek at
Microprose's nautical
diversion.

Editorial and Advt-rtis-ing offices:

1$S King's Road, Brentwood,

Esse* CMH 4EF.

TsS: 0277-234459 (Editonat);

0277 234434 (Advertising)

Telecom Gold; 72:MAG02)

Published by Avralfte Ltd, Arlington
Park, Adlington, Macdestielcf SK10 4NP.

News trade? distribution: Diamt?nd-EufOpft ss Safes
& Distdturtion I to, Unit T Burgess Road, fvyhptise
fang, Hastings, East Sussex TN3$ iW
Tel: 0424 430422

Editor; Simon Rockman
Editorial Assistants: Elaine Rawlins,

Jeff Walker

Advertisement Manager; Jane Wadham
Advertisement Sales: Virginia Clarke

Amstrad is a .registered trade mark, and with the
title Ammad Computer User, is used with Ihc
permission of Amstrad pfc. No part of this
publication may be produced l^i'TJ'iOuJ permission.
White e very effort is made to ensure the accuracy
of all features and listings we Cannot accept any
liability for vny mistakes or misprints, The views
and opinions expressed arc nut necessarily those of
Amstrad OkAmsoft hut represent the fi'enre of our
many readers, users, and contributors, Material for
publication is only accepted on an ail-rights basis.

We regret that Amsttad Computer User cannot
enter into personal correspondence.

ABC I

&3.5M

■inn .lufiis 1W7

Amstrad User July 1988

Page 3

COIN-OP

ci:.'-. I pre'SCiH.i!.

BPfnrahr'HW'r ..

A '. . 1 i ! l(?]"?!. w , ins f y i'i 1
11 (! i rtf I 11 ih

'Irnmrnsnly hinpfp^Myf* tine; i.hronic.iify
■ .nJiJ|( dv:' •.<i!n I in.. 1 I the Ajk.sn<M
lorriMC into j 'ievil >uslv urn li.ulrd .ireas 6l
i '\i Hfrnu ■ A i IhIv-Ii
Yiijir Sim Lin

1 tSj spectrum CA ss£7\gs a iA5JRAD LA35 £U55 COMMODORECA55£B.95
0CVH96 SP£C + 3£M 95 C54 D15KE12.3SAM5 DISK £ 14,35

f A tiding to the fun and excitement of Arkannid... Afi new features include exit
chokes to vastly increase the screen options, many extra '*VAUS'' offsets, multiple sitots and a secret additional alien to contend with. This
adds up to the most thrilling reaction game since ARKAHDID hut with so many improvements you just won't he able to stop ploying...

♦1

The vast majority of releases
will have been developed on
other computers, CPC con¬
versions are promised.

Manchester-based Red Rat
is currently developing R-aliy
Run, which looks to be an
excellent car rallying simi>
latior* and the first Bubble
Bus game for Mandarin is
Srarquake, a rip roaring
explore and shoot-'em-up.

The next adventure off the
Level 9 assembly line will be
Lancelot, a game based on
past ages of chivalry when
men were men and women
got caught by the dragons
and screamed a lob

CPC price
on hold

FEARS that the world
shortage of dram chips
might force up CPC prices
appear to be groundless - at
least for the time being.

Although Amstrad has
increased the retail cost of its
PCW and PC computers
there ere no similar moves
planned for the CPC range.

A company spokesman

carriage printer

THE i a test in the fast growing
range of Amstrad printers is
the IBM and Epson-
compatible LQ5000 01. ft is a
professional 24 pie dot
matrix printer which
produces output in the best
letter quality at 96 cps, and
draft quality at a rapid 298
cps.

Designed specifically for

the many users of stationery
up to 16 inches wide, the
LG5QQ0 D1 readily accepts
paper in fanfold, cut sheet
and roll paper format.

It is fed either by the belt
tractor drive or friction
feeder,

Both a serial and a parallel
interface are included in the
£399 + VAT price tag,

Mandarin

launch

LEE Ho Fook, in the heart of
London's Chinatown, is per¬
haps the premier Chinese
restaurant in the country. As
such, Mandarin Software
could not have chosen a
more delicious - we mean
prestigious - venue for its
launch.

The setting was a large
split-level slderoom off the
main restaurant; the upper
level accommodating a
selection of micros running a
selection of software and
demos, the lower level
accommodating the really
important things like food,
drink and the Amstrad CPC
math i no¬
spread liberally around
the proceedings was the
Mandarin team looking more
like the cast of Fu Manchu
meets The Wo If men than a
complement of software
marketing executives.

Chinese moustache dan¬
gling beneath a hat that
could shelter half a small vil¬
lage from rain, Chris Payne,
Mandarin's marketing man¬
ager, told us excitedly of
Mandarin's plans,

"No less than five well
known software houses have
linked up with Mandarin/' he
said, "Level 9, Bubble Bus.,
Powerhouse, Red Rat, and
Jawx International of Paris".

They intend to release no
more than ten to a dozen
games a year. But these
releases, Chris says, will be
of the highest possible
quality.

Amstrad CPC owners can
already judge this quality for
themselves. The Level 9
team have put together a
Time and Magik trilogy of
adventures that consists of
enhanced versions of Lords
of Time, Red Moon and The
Price of Magik.

Mandarin classes the CPC
in the "established" group of
home computers. Although

A ms trad User July 1988

Page 5

Mandarin's Peter Holme, Mike Cowley end Chris Fayas at their inscrutable best

told J Amstrad Computer
User, "It is because the CPC
is selling In such large quan¬
tities that we have been able
to keep down the cost to the
end user. “We have no plans

at present to increase the
basic price of CPC machines,
but should the dram
shortage get worse we
will have to review the
situation"

The trilogy

Interactive fiction

from Lpy»fO

T hree of Level 9 r s most acclaimed adven*
tures - Lords of Time, Red Moon and The
Price of Magik - come together in one
package. Each has been enhanced and enlarged
with more text than ever before - 60,000 mind¬
expanding words creating magik and mystery
round every corner. There's a powerful new
parser, and most disc versions include stunning
digitised pictures that help to dramatically
heighten the atmosphere.

What the press have said:

LOROS OF TIME: "Destined to become a classic " -

Computing with the Amstrad

RED MOON: Best Graphical Adventure or Best
Adventure of the Year - Z/ap 64, Crash, Amttx, C&VG,
CCf, a fid A ms trad Computer User.

THE PRICE OF MAGIK: "Another superb adventure -,.
their best yet" - Commodore User. Also a Crash
Smash.

Europe House, Adlington Park,

Ad ling ton, Macclesfield SKID 4IMP

ENQUIRIES; 0625 B7888B ORDER HOTLINE; 0625 873920

r« n i \ uiH iiw mh. sciruls irti het ^ Nj

Mlt < rw mr, It !fc ifiK i 9 IH1TM (ill Ml

ii'ri }*> ii m !ns. toum i m

fctiin

Screen shots from
Atari ST version

Spectrum (cassette} Plus 3 (disci
Commodore 64 (cassette or disc}
Amstrad CPC (cassette or disc)
Atari XUXE (cassette or disc)
Amstrad PCW (disc)

Apple II (disc) _

£14.95

Atari ST

Commodore Amiga
Macintosh

Amstrad PC, IBM PC
and compatibles

£19.95

Available from all good stockists or order direct by sending a
cheque or postal order made payable to Mandarin, together with
your name and address. Piice includes PBeP. Access/Visa owners:
Phone our hotline or send your card number with your order.

PRINCE Charles Is right, you
don't have to be a sandal-
wearing hippy to care about
the environment.

On March 30 the elec¬
tronic magazine Micronet
proved it by using the latest
technology to promote the
conservation cause when it
interviewed Bill Oddie by
computer. Bill, former
Goodie r is Vice President of
the British Trust for Conser¬
vation Volunteers,

JJ Prirtce Charles hit the nai
on the head", agreed Qddie,
"when he said conserva¬
tionists need a more up-to-
date image.

"'Events like this interview
with Micronet are an
excellent example of how we
are using today's technology
to help preserve the

Training

courses

THOMPSON Computers of
Peterborough has released
two training courses for
Protext.

The courses are available
on disc for you to use at
home or the office at your
own pace.

The first course, on mail
merge, includes coverage of
setting up a list of names end
addresses, how to merge
them into documents, print¬
ing labels and selective mail
merging.

The second course is for
advanced use of Protext.

Both courses are available
now on PCW and CPC6128
using Protext CP/M*, and
the mail merge course is also
available for CPC users of
Pro text and Pro merge. Each
course costs £16.50 on disc.

bikes help them to travel
overland, while their thrust-
packs and handheld lasers
can he used when they enter
the mine.

Blood Brothers costs £9.99
tape, £14.99 disc.

• Professional BMX Simu¬
lator from Code Masters is
the world's first ever simul¬
taneous four player com¬
puter game.

it is an enhanced develop¬
ment of BMX Simulator,
holder of the record for the
number of consecutive
weeks {over 70i in the UK
computer games chan.

The enhancements to Pro¬
fessional BMX include
having standard and then
expert versions of the game.

There are five dirtbiking
courses , and a second
cassette contains five quarry
racing and five desert riding
courses.

Professional BMX Simu¬
lator Is being converted to
the CPC by the famed Olivet
twins , Britain's besr selling
computer games authors in
1987. Look out for it soon on
the Code Masters Plus label
priced £4.99 tape.

§ Beyond the ice Palace,,
from Elite,, is a magical game
of fantasy which tells of the
battle between good and
evil. Your quest is to rid the
forest of the evil spirits and
return the land to peace and
normality.

Many goblins and strange
creatures must be overcome
on your travels as you strive
to remain afen at ail times.
Written by Dave Perry,
author of Tranter, Beyond
the ice Pa face should be
worth waiting for. Price £9.99
tape , £14,99 disc

# Coming soon from
Hewson, blasting aliens from
the earth and the skies when
it gets here, will be Batilecar
Marauder.

Variable intensity lasers
seer through the battlefield,
winder missiles skim low
overhead, Molotov cocktails
explode to your left and
right.

Battlecar Marauder is the
vertical scrolling invention of
Glaswegian Mark Kelly, with
spectacular graphics from
ace author Steve Crow,
complemented by virtuoso

environment"

Oddie will be
questions sent in
computers from Micro net's
25,000 nationwide users. In
particular, he will be
promoting the Trust's cam¬
paign, launched after last
October's storms in the

for the BTCV by running a
competition to win tree-
inspired prizes.

All proceeds from the
event will be going to the
Emergency Tree Fund,
Micronet is raising funds
South East, to plant a million
new trees,

LiiOV r ",->l -4f

^■1

New release round up

battle music from Barry
Leitch and Dave Rodgers.
Battlecar Marauder will prob -
ably be priced at HewsonS
usual £9.99 tape, £14.99 disc.

• A real-life outdoor pursuit
simulation with a difference
is being worked on by Grem¬
lin Graphics. Poller skating is
the pastime, and Skate Crazy
is the geme.

As every streetwise kid
knows, the only way to
succeed is to gain street cred
from your friends and
onlookers. The ideal venue
for sucb a venture is Grem¬
lins scrolling map of a multi¬
storey car park.

You must bun around on
your skates performing
daredevil stunts such as
leaping from ramps , 360
degree turns, barrier jumps
and skating backwards.

Skate Crazy has an extra
dimension - a completely
separate interfacing game
can be played on side 8.
Locations such as the
underground subways must

be skated along in this differ¬
ent challenge.

§ Also new from Gremlin
Graphics is Blood Brothers
The game is based around
two brothers. Hark and Kren,
from the distant planet
Sylonia which is rich in min¬
erals.

In recent times their plane!
has been plundered by a
hostile race, the Scorpians.

Blood Brothers action

These nortinasties stole a
large quantity of precious
gems from Sylonia and it is
now the responsibility of
Hark and Kren to recover
them from the Scot plans'
planet

Both have very manoeuv¬
rable jeh bikes fined with
laser bolt weapon units. The

Am snap User July ? 988

Page 7

- TJiEY VtK Df TJiE ^DBDT

Q: WTJT iVE HEARD OF THE YEARS OF THE CAT, PIG, AND £Wj> iJR4GO,V D\

BIT THE YEAr of the robot?

Jk Absolute^! And ROMANTIC ROBOT wish to make 1988 a truly memorable yew (Lf nut us, who wlJ]?>
Tu kick off with, I here a an INTRODUCTORY OFFER OF £29.88 ON KUDOS, plus a tnifcy unique L m
SPRING MAIL- ORDER FKEUE OF MULTI FACE WO - £42,8#!

Qi I LOVE HALES. BIT WHAT'S SO LIKEABLE ABOUT RODOS and MU L171-AC F?

A: RODOS is too powerful and cumpltK lo be .summed up here - please send a SAE for full Info.

MULTI FACE is (simply) a MOST for ANY CPC owner it can copy and change program* as you wish.

Q: OH, DO I NEED TO DO ANY' PROGRAMMING TO MIKE BACK-UPS?

A; NO! - NOT with the MULTI FACE WO - it is in. feet the ONLY product on the market which works
FULLY AUTOMATIC,ALLY, Ynu LOAD any program is usual, RUN it fur as long as you like and when you
wish to make a copy you just press the MULTI FACE'S red button and fellow the menu and on-screen Instructions

Q: HOW DOES FT WORK THEN? IS IT FAST? USER-FRIENDLY? ERROR-TRAPPED? IDIOT PROOF? GUARANTEED?

A: YES! It works a treat and It could not be easier. The menu gives four basic options - lo SAVE a program, to RETURN to continue it, lo JUMP (say lo your own routines -
invaluable for hackers) and TOOL to ufc-ens the MULTI-TOOLKIT set of built-in utilities. For example pressing S to SAVE will first aUow you to NAME the back up and then
let you saw p PROGRAM or just a SCREEN to TAPE or DISK. Before rhe saving itself, MULTIFACE compresses, the program Me tlmt it lakes the least amount of space un
tepe/di*k and will re-load as quicks as possible, Once a program is saved, you can RETURN or JUMP,, use the TOOLKIT lo change it. SAVE it again, etc,

Qi DON'T YOU CORRUPT THE SCREEN WITH YOUR MENU INSTRUCTIONS, PUU DOWN WINDOWS, ETC.?

A: NO, MtlLTIFACE TWO has its own memory (SK RDM & 8K RAM) and a lot more hardware - thus when it finishes its job or when you re-lnsd your baek-ups, every thing is
FULLY and AUTOMATICALLY restored: screen modes, colours, windows, etc. This is essential and NO OTHER DEVICE CAN DO IT!

Q: OK SO MULT1FACF CAN COPY FROM TAPI TO DISC, BUT CAN IT DO TAPE TO TAPI Off RISC TO OIIC Off DISC TO TAPE?

A: Of course it can. MULTIFACE saves either to tape wr tlbsc and It saves whatever happens to he in the computer at that time - no matter how you loaded it in.

Qt SO FAR SO GOOD * BIT CANT I DO ALL TIDS WITHOUT JIIE MULTI FACE?

A: ABSOLUTELY NOT! First, you need a hardware device, a H magic box'’, to be ahle la slop am! copy programs AT ANY STAGE - be it upan loading, half-way through the game, etc.
Tape/disc copiers can only try tu copy programs BEFORE they load- if there are unorthodox loaders, speed belts, protections against copying, etc., yun'IE and up with i problem - but
not with a back-up, AJsr>, with MULTIFACE yen can [mike infinite lives, ammunition, etc, - and then SAVE.

Q: MULTIFACE IS NOT THE ONLY MAGIC BOX' ON THE MARKET - WHY SHOULD I BUY IT MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE?

A; There are four devices on the market Action R^ly by Datel Electronics, Disc Wizard by Evesham Micros, Mirage imager and MULTI FACE TWO. Each manufacturer would
naturally argue his product is the best buy - fortunately (for you and us), M1CRONET recently impaired ail four units and MULTIFACE TWO came out the best in literally all
respects: the moat successful one - 100*!, the ONLY AUTOMATIC ONE, the FASTEST ONE both in LOADING AM> SAVING lime, the one taking the LEAST ROOM when saving -
ami you still gel a couple of EXTRAS: a RESET button and an extensive and unique MULTI TOOLKIT-

Q; MULTIFACE LS TTt THE RIGHT THING IN THF RIGHT ilME! IE ONLY 17 PAID FOR ITSELF.,

A: But it does! 1 By the time you buy 8 programs on tape instead of disc, you will have saved £.40 - the cost of the MULTIFACE, The money you save on further programs is all yours

.... HULTIFACE A worth ncry penny t »avts y*u pounds!

Romantic [ | j^'bot [} Jisc Operating >

Just one ROM will turn your CPC into a
professional set-up: With RODOS you can
attach additional disc drives - 40/80 track*
single/double sided and st ore mo re than
800k per disc.

I jystfem

rspJtifocrj ivjfj

SPRING
MAIL ORDER
SALE PRICE
£42.88

NEW.

But RODOS is in fact much more than a fast
and perfect DOS. RODOS also gives you
RANDOM ACCESS* PRINTER BUFFER, full
ROM manager* SILICON DISC, altogether
54 new bar commands, enormous power -
all this and much more for £29.88 only!

INTRODUCTORY
OFFER-ON ROM
£ 29-88

The Special price (if £42_8H
applies strictly to mull
orders revived with the
coupon below before the
AOth June. 19SS

Tape lo-dtsk ai ihe touch oF a burton
Ridiculous ysu may say. bul u work-: ^vt>iy
iimi* Mu If tface caji slop my progjam j r. Us
i tanks and save the program from, memory
to either lape or disk h's complelely Fool
proof Similar piedU-Cis have had problems
with screen sizu. colour -and even sound
Mulnface ear, handre all these wiiftour a
second ploughi

Thai .none would have sashed many
people bui fiomam ic Robot has gore otic
stiff j fuiihej incorporating a memory n-di
ioj No program is s-iFi l with ihra every
ihiiig Ld mil in Chi' Open. mcrluditig ihi- ; r !a,
registers, CfiTC daia and any pair $1
men cry

Don > be Fooled into thanking Ihis will
resell in mass piracy, however The Mult)
/act*- urni itisril miiji be plugged into your
Arristrad rc arrow reloading of a ptogtam a
s-s v ed

Multiface //must be the clever esl hard¬
ware device al presenf a r.ecessily for
d-sk owners who though! they were stuck
wuh . Oad: i::; ft Cut, lapi- evi-ry lime

AMSTRAI) ACTION |ANl \k\ IOH”

THE YEAR DF THE RDBDT- BE PffRT OF U

I order MULTIFACE 2 f £42,88} U/ RODOS (C29.88) LJ pl us p&p UK£1, Europe £2 , Overseas £3

\ enclose a cheque PO for C.or debit my E3^C np [ , , ^ . , ~1 Card exp....

Name A address...............

■MWnC

® 54 Dean sc roll Avenue, London NWS SEN

01-200 8870

It's a farr cop

Tar for teHing us

THE editorial views of ACU concerning tape to
disc copiers are well known, and a boring old
subject too. Your reply i April! to Keith Kent, "you
... don't need to .buy any of the illegal programs
for copying software",, has caused a few raised
eyebrows. Nemesis are one of the two adver¬
tisers who have long offered such programs for
sale in ACU, and your comments are clearly
directed at us,

I strongly suspect you meant that such pro¬
grams can be used for making illegal copies,
rather than the copying programs are themselves
illegal. The latter is not the case, nor can one have
an opinion on matters of strict legality. If they
were indeed illegal then questions arise concern*
ing aiding and abetting, compounding felonies
end soon.

Can i make it clear that Nemesis do not con¬
done piracy, however affected. We do also
market programs that are not related to copying.

I'll follow the usual letter requirement of tell ing
you my impressions of ACU, Until recently it was
the crummiest magazine available for CPC users.
However, the offerings of real computer users,

Jeff Walker and Pat Winstantey, in your pages
have livened things up somewhat,

Colin F. Harris,

Prop Nemesis,

LD: The articles you highlight were commis¬
sioned as a result of last year's surveys There is
another one this month. You've only yourself to
blame if you don 't fill it in. We've been able to
squeeze more into each magazine since January
when we reduced the size of the type to get about
30 per cent more o.nfp each page.

visions and monitors is that the electron guns in
the tube have J 'lost emission 17 , which is to say
their cathodes don't produce enough electrons.

Emission can often be restored by overunning
the heater filaments for a short period. As this
can also result in blown filaments and a useless
tube it is bast left to someone who knows what
they are doing.

I suggest Mr McClure asks at his local TV repair
shops. From the sound of it, he has little to lose.

Mike Brown
Anfiekf

Lost emission

ALEX McClure I May 1988) may be able to solve
the problem with his monitor more cheaply than
he thinks,

The usual problem with ageing, fading tele*

,4ms trad User July 'l 988

Send your Setters to:

Lance Davis
Letters Editor
Amstrad Computer User
169 Kings Road. Brentwood
Essex CM 14 4EF

I JUST came to the end of Army Moves when it
printed "Now go on to Navy Moves" on the
screen. This is misleading because you cannot
buy it, I rang Imagine who said they were won¬
dering whether to release it or not.

1 hope this has comforted all the other people
who have finished this game,

S.Khan,

Twickenham.

LD: Well spotted, SK. Just for that I'm sending
you Cybernoid to finish.

Down under upgrade

I HAVE a 464 with DDI-1 disc drive, DMP-2000
printer, S5A-1 speech synthesiser, Dart scanner
and LP-1 light pen. If I upgrade my computer by
fitting the 6128 Basic rom, will all these periph¬
erals still work correctly?

I realise I would also need the DK'tronics ram
and a 6128 user guide from?

In New Zeeland we now receive ACU by air
freight and so usually get it in the month of issue.
Can we now enter all those wonderful competi¬
tions you hold?

I think your new look mag is really great.
Thanks for all your help.

Chris Frakes,
Hawick, New Zealand,

LD: Yes, ail your add-ons will still work. Yes, you
will have a 8128. Contact your Amstrad dis¬
tributor concerning all the bits: Grandstand Com¬
puters Ltd, 21 Great South Road, Newmarket ,
Auckland.

As for the competitions,, yes of course you can
enter them , but if the prize is something like a
chocolate cake, we are not going to air freight
something that's fragile

Harsh and negative

I WRITE with reference to the review of our Small
Traders Pack which appeared in the April issue.

In our opinion, it was quite apaliingly one-sided
and biased against our product. Mr Foster seems
to have missed the whole point somehow. His
report cannot go unchallenged and we therefore
request the right to reply,

The Small Traders Pack is intended as in anti¬
dote to all those highbrow accounts packages
which practically require a degree both in com¬
puter and business studies to comprehend. Our
customers, as welt as other reviewers, seem to
appreciate the value for money and simplicity
which our approach offers.

The review fails to mention any of the soft¬
ware's good points; the impression given is that
there are none, apart from grudging praise for
the well written manual.

In fact vital information such as debtor and

►

Page 9

SOFTWARE THAT’S
HARD TO BEAT

T A SWORD 6128

The Word Processor - with Mail Merge

The established, powerful word processor for
the Amstrad CPC 6128. TASWORD 6128 has
been specifically developed to use 64K of
memory as text spaca This means a text file
can be a massive 60,000 characters in length,
enough room for over 10,000 words!

Featuring all standard and many extra word
processing facilities TASWORD 6126
incorporates sophisticated print options,
on-screen help, notepads, user definable keys
allowing commonly used words, sentences or
paragraphs to he typed with a single keypress
and a powerful built-in data merge facility.
Extensive customisation facilities allow many
of the facilities to he changed for personal
requirements and sarved into the program.

0y combining power with ease af use
TASWORD 6126 is the complete word
processor for the CPC 6128. Disc £24.95

TASWORD UPGRADES

TASWORD 464 and Amsword owners: sens
your original cassette or disc ta the
packagingl as proof Df purchase and 03,90.
Your original will be returned tog Ether with
TASWORD 464-D or TASWORD 6126 cm disc.

TASCOPY 464

The Screen Copier
for the CPC 6128, 664 and 464

A suite of fast machine code screen copy
software for the CPC computers. Print high
resolution screen copies in black and white
and also large ''shaded'' cepes with different
dot densities for the various screen colours.
TASCOPY can also print "poster size" copies
- screen copies printed onto two or four
sheets can he cut end joined to make the
poster. Disc £12,90 Cassette £9.90

TASWORD 464-D

The Word Processor - with Mail Merge

The TASWORD especially developed to utilise
the capabilities of the CPC 464 and 664 disc
drives. Additional facilities indude a larger
text file size and automatic cn-screen disc
directories during save and lead operations.

A major feature is the data merge facility:

Mail merge, in which a fetter is printed any
number of times, each individually addressed
to a different person, is jest one application of
this powerful facility. TASWORD 464-D is
supplied on, and only runs on, disc.

Disc £24,95

TASWORD 464

TAS-SI GN

The Word Processor

Your 464 becomes a professional standard
word processor with TASWORD 464.

Supp;ic-d complete with a comprehensive
manual and a cassette which contains both
the program and TASWORD 454 TUTOR.

This teaches you word processing using
TASWORD 464. Whether you have- serious
applications or simply want to learn about
word processing, TASWORD 464 and the
TUTOR make it easy and enjoyable.

Cassette £19,95

The Sign Maker
for the CPC 6128 and PCW

Produce and print your own signs, posters,,
banners and large notices to get your
message across with maximum impact
A complete sign making package including
four distinctive lettering styles, character
heights from one inch to the full width of the
paper,, italics, underlining, borders, eight
shading patterns, variable letter spacing,
automatic kerning end line centering.

Signs may be printed across The paper or
along the length of the paper to produce
large eye-catching banners and notices.

Disc £29.95

TAS SlGhl - additional fonts

wo new, impressive fonts for TAS-SIGN, the
sign maker: ROMAN' a clear, classical font
and HO BAFT, a hold and imposing typeface.

Disc £12.50

PERFECTIQW IN PROFESSIONAL SOFTWARE

Spr-ng'rfild Hduk, Hvds Terrace, tends LSZ 9LN Id lOEJZt ■CJSJUl

TASSPELL

The Spelling Checker

Spelling mistakes and typing errors spoil any
document whether it's a private letter or your
latest navel. With TAS SPELL you are free to
bo creative in the confident knowledge that
your spelling won't let you down.

TAS-SPELL checks the spelling of text typed
with TASWORD 464 D and TASWORD 6128
by comparing the wards in yaur text with
those in e dictionary of over 20,030 words.
Suspect words are highlighted — you may
correct, ignore lit might be a name! or even
add words to the dictionary. Please note that
TAS-SPELL only works with TASWORD 464 D
and TASWORD 6128. Disc £16.50

TASPRINT 4 64

The Style Writer
for the CPC 6128,664 and 464

A must for dot matrix printer owners!

Print Tasword output and program listings in
a choice of five impressive print styles.

Varying from the futuristic DATA RUN to the
hand writing style of PALACE SCRIPT,
TASPRINT gives your output originality und
style! Oise £12.90 Cassette £9.90

T AS-DI AR Y

The Electronic Diary
TAS DIARY for the Amstrad CPC 6128,
664 and 464 with disc drive
Keep art electronic day-to-day diary on disc 1
TAS DIARY features a clock, calendar and a
separate screen display for every day of the
year Each year stored on disc includes a
memo pad and several note pages.

TAS-DIARY is an invaluable aid to keeping
records, reminders, and any other data which
is related to that most valuable commodity of
ours — time Disc £12.90

Tas Sign, lasprim aid Tsisrcipv r!iri« newly all Hcl-marrnc
pnnrers including ihoK made by:

Admata Canon VarnEsnswi Tally Shmwa
Arnsrrae Citiien NEC Smish Corona

Agrech Garenh (Newbury Sord

Bfoihor Epson' ^waswiii Siar

C I Kill liHga-TaxHr Kmkctiha

If you do nor vvanc to cui ttiis mega; ne. simply write out your order a^d post to: TASMAN SOFTWARE. GEPT ACU. SPRENGFIELD HOUSE, HYDE IEflRACE, LEEDS LS? %N

; I entlftte 3 ehequ^PQ made pay^t le to TASMAN Sallware Lie OR char ge mv flCCESS'VlSA number:__ t*p?fies

| NAME_ITEM _:_ PRICE

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; TBiiphane Acras/Vca orders: Leeds IOS12M3&3Q1 TOTAL f_

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LETTERS

creditor reports, customer statements, stock re¬
order listings etc are available easily, oath on
screen and printer,

Invoice data is posted directly to the sales
ledger and is also used to compile statements
automatically as opposed to the hours it would
take to prepare this data manually.

But then Mr Foster is not concerned with time.
Afte rail, he is quite happy to press 255 keys when
only one is required! to enter an option! If he
really thinks that small traders have time to spare
doing that sort of thing then he knows nothing
about running a business.

We accept that some of The criticisms of the
early version reviewed were justified, In an effort
to make the package as easy as possible to
operate 1 think we did over simpify certain
aspects. That's why in the current version we
have improved the VAT handling to cater for
three separate rates and the delete option has
been replaced by a start new period routine.

The invoicer now produces credit notes as well
as invoices (optionally auto-numbered} and
statements. In general, program presentation has
been greatly enhanced and all main and sub
menu options are now by single keypress. Only
vital routines such as quit program are on double
press.

E r ror checking and coipur control has also
been improved but we make no apologies for
using all three modes at various times, why else
are they available but to offer some contrast?
Why should a business program always be
boring to look at?

J u st t he othe r day we h ad a tele pho ne cal I fro m
a gentleman who had seen our software in action
on the CPC and was so impressed with it's effec¬
tiveness that he virtually begged us to produce a
version for the PCW.

He had previously bought an accounts package
costing almost £200 and found it practically
impossible to use. The documentation was
incomprehensible and after the program reached
a certain point it just hung. When he contacted
the software house for support, he was told that
the 60 day warranty period had elapsed and he
would have to pay £80 extra for help.

In contrast, we provide free advice and offer
cheap updates to valued old customers. All they
need do is return the original disc plus £5 to
receive the latest version, The point I am making
is that our software offers an inexpensive and
practical solution for automating a small
business.

The self-styled elitists of the -ndustry won't like
it because ai it breaks the price barrier and: bl it
cuts through the mystique of business
computing. They prefer expensive, complex sys¬
tems which demand and thus preserve their
expertise.

Some software houses boast that this or that
package was designed by accountants. The
result, quite often, is that only accountants can
operate such programs. Like computer experts,
they tend to use a jargon all of their own.

Of course the software has to be correct from
an accounting and VAT view point. We have
worked very hard on this aspect to the extent that
our ledgers now produce VAT summaries for
both the optional cash accounting scheme and/or

cash/credit trading. Many expensive systems do
not.

Let me end by saying that we realise our pro¬
grams are not perfect None are, however costly
they may be, Our policy is to improve our
products with regular updates,, including the best
suggestions received from customer feedback.

We are one of the very few software producers
who are offering real business programs for the
small but worthwhile CPC market. We plan to
continue doing so as long as is viable. However,
our cause is not helped or encouraged by the sort
of harsh and negative review which appeared in
your magazine,

S.Denson,
SD Microsystems

LD: We stand by our review, and wonder whether
you keep your own accounts on your own
software ,

Wobbfy Arnold

I HAVE a 464 and have recently noticed That some
of my software has started to crash on loading,
The motor seems to be suffering from slight
speed fluctuations. How can I rectify the
problem?

l.&.Gee,
Redhill, Surrey.

LD: Contact your heal dealer, or if you want to fix
it yourself, all the bits are available from CPC,
Phone them on 0772 555034.

No books in Doncaster

I OWN a CPC 464 and am a newcomer to the
world of Amstrad computing. I would like to
know where l can buy a book of programs for this
computer as I have tried all the shops in
Doncaster.

Andrew Davies,
Doncaster,

Did you try the butcher's
Seriously, there must be over WO books writ¬
ten about the CPC by now, If its listings you
want there's a book called Sixty Programs for the
Amstrad CPC 464 published by Pan at £5.95.
Write to Pan at: Pan Books iCS Dept), P.O.Box 40 ,
Basingstoke, Hants.

Wasted pennies

I HAVE just bought your issue for April 1988.1
own an Amstrad PCW8256 and usually buy your
sister magazine for the PCW.

Flicking through the the April ACU ! noticed
what appeared to be a number of interesting ar¬
ticles together with an interesting game for
typing in.

Imagine my disappointment when I got home
to discover that the magazine, articles, letters,

Amstrad User July 1983

Page 1 '

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&m<itrarf ! f<t&r hth/ 1 dlfffl

ITERS

/ •

games., Ads and all, are intended for the CPC
use r, des pits your state me nt o n sage 3 th at this i s
JJ The official magazine for all users of Amstrad
computers".

It would help new Amstrad owners to find the
right magazine for their machine if you state
dearly on the front cover that ACU is for CPC
users, as you do for the PCW (not to mention the
wasted pennies'), A.H.fledford,

Wlvenhoe, Essex

LD: Point taken, We're making the necessary
changes.

Shake, rattle and scroll

by having the interconnecting cable the wrong
way up at one end,

I think all Peter needs to do is unplug the IOC
connector at either end of the cable and turn it
over.

Can a second drive be driven from the in-built
power supply in the colour monitor?

Jim Murray,
Bingham, Notts.

LD: The answer to your question is probably yes,
but you are 0,0 your own. You do so at your own
risk as it is "outside the spec' 1 as they say.

Not made in Britain

ONCE when I typed in a magazine listing which
was supposed to scroll a bal I around the screen I
had to switch my computer off PDG because it
was making the disc drive make the most awful
noises.

Scrolling in Basic is quite remarkably slow, All
my efforts in machine code have interesting
results; as often as not the computer crashes. Do
you know any simple, fairly smooth, fairly fast
scrolling routines?

David Homs blow,
Beading,

LD: Back in June 1987 we published Justin s
Scroti, the ultimate in CPC sideways scrolling, it
gave you the knowhow to create parallax effects
- the example being a message scrolling quickly
In front of 3 slowly scrolling background.

Smooth, yesFast, yes. Simple , definitely not.
Ah waif two out of three isn't bad.

Wip« out

IN reply to Peter Steers (May} re. the Hitachi
drive, I have the same setup myself and must
admit that I too had similar problems, i found that
I was wiping out the directory each time I tried to
use the drive. However, after much head scratch¬
ing I found out that all my troubles were caused

WHEN looking through April's ACU I find that you
say the MP2 is better than the MPi. In what
ways?

Spencer Jung,
Harlow, Essex.

LD: Apart from the fact that the MP2 includes a
power supply for the 6123 disc drive , it also has
much better video circuitry fit wasn't made in
Britain, the MPI was).

Although I have taken ACL 1 for three years now, I
am becoming increasingly frustrated.

The Hairy Hacker used to be interesting, now
it's just a list of pokes which couid be clearer and
take up less apace if printed as such.

The Cage Page surely must be of extreme
minority interest and is akin to overhearing
someone else's telephone conversation.
Devoting three pages to that is but a space filler,
Most Amstrsds were purchased some time
■ago, therefore most are not beginners, but I agree
that Basic programming, especially of the more
advanced kind, is useful.

I think that what is required is something new
to do with your computer, not a rehash of articles

that have appeared over and over again in vari¬
ous forms for years.

The Hairy Hacker should revert to his previous
style and really do some hacking. Things like
Multiface do exist, so how about some advice on
how to use them effectively?

Hardware projects -1 know you would be step¬
ping on a few companies' toes, but who are you
there to serve? What about simple output ports to
control external devices. RS232 interfaces, B bit
printer port, a Midi interface, a cheap fight pen? I
remember a BBC magazine once had a hardware
project to build a Mufti face type device.

Assembly Point was a good series - why has it
stopped? Let's have more machine code. Why
not a step-by-step guide to writing a multiscreen
game? How to program a scrolling landscape?
How to program sprites that pass in front of some
things and behind others? Above ail, lets not go
back to hex and binary explanations and how to
write text on the screen.

Come on ACU- it r S getting dull

Colin Naylar,
Cardigan

LD: Amstrad User has to cater for all levels of
ability. The machines are still selling well so there
are plenty of new users. Cage Page was dropped
a couple of months ago. Using a Multiface is not
backing, it's pressing a button on a black box.

The hardware projects we have run were not
that popular. There is a new, and very good ,
machine code series. We have had a step-by-step
guide to writing a multi screen game. We have
had an article on how to scroll the screen and one
on software sprites. I can't remember anything
on hex to binary.

Don r t contradict yourself by asking for these
things and not wanting re-hashes ACU is a maga¬
zine for a majority. Your voting form is on Page

45 .

Gotcha!

PLEASE find enclosed a stamped addressed
envelope for a listing of the CP/M Virus program.
We thank you in anticipation of an early reply.

Alan McGregor
Customer Services Dept
Amstrad User Club

JUST a note re. More Expensive? by S Barker,
(March). He should be so lucky, by the time the
magazine reaches New Zealand we pay S7.50 n.z.
for it,

j would not miss it, for the help and advice are
great. I am £G+ years and have nothing but praise
for the magazine. The only one I have not
received since Oct/Nov 1984 was a foul up by the
importers for Sept 19B7, a matter I am
endeavouring to correct.

Mrs J Butt,
Rotorua, New Zealand

LD: You've made my month , Mrs Butt. Have a
Sept 1987 issue on me.

Amstrad User July J988

Page 13

muG

THE INDEPENDENT
MicroLink User Group

NEWSLETTER

Through the
Gateway

Gateways are connections hi
other computers, MicroLink
has a number of these, to
British, European and
American databases, am!
one which has come in for a
bit of publicity recently is
the USA-based Mnematics
Videotex service.

This offers simitar fea¬
tures to MicroLink, but as
iTs mostly used by American
subscribers it is infriguingiy
different in style.

But the number of Micro-
Link subscribers using the
gateway has made an
impact. The UK SiG (Special
Interest Group) has passed a
message on to MUG com¬
menting on this, and asking
us for our ideas and reac¬
tions to the service,

They also have online par¬
ties; a number of subscribers
get on line at the same time
and use the Mnematics
CHAT facility to discuss
anything that seems worth
talking about.

So if you've ever fostered
a secret ambition to invade
America, this might be just
the wav to do it.

only know their fellow
MicrnLinkers as names and
numbers. And most sub¬
scribers have questions and
suggestions about the
service, judging from the
enthusiastic discussions on
features and performance
that pepper the BE,

So how about meetings,
where users can get together
in convivial surroundings
and perhaps get to button¬
hole a MicroLink official
specialty imported for the
occasion? That's the idea
hehind the Linkups.

So far, volunteers have
said they'll organise Linkups
in Manchester, Birmingham
and London, As everything
is being sorted out on the BR,
dates, times and venues are
extremely flexible; as things
become more definite lhey"lI
he published in Mugshnt.
And if the Linkups are as
successful as they should be,
they could well lurn into
regular events.

For the latest details mi
Linkups, mail MAG95816 or
check on the board.

Linkup

Umbrella

organisation

Most MicroLink members -
even the active ones who
regularly chat, mail and use
the Bulletin Board (BB) —

Starting a small business is
encouraged these days, hut
anyone going it alone for the
first time soon discovers a
huge range of problems -
bureaucratic, financial and

Getting carried away

,.,is one of the reasons the
Cambridge Computer Z88
has been so popular, A
number of MicroLink sub¬
scribers either have one or
are interested in the beast.
And in the tradition started
bv Brian Va Llot-Lew is'
(MAGI 1357) Archimedes
User Group, a Z88 group has
started up on MicroLink.

This one's organised by
Vance Burton, Evervbodv in

the group keeps a list of all
the other members, and the
Email system makes it easy
for anyone to send a request
for help or a new discovery
to everyone else.

And if nobody in the
group can solve a particular
problem, then as soon as
Cambridge Computer comes
up with the answer it tan he
distributed to everyone.

The Archimedes group

practical - which can sap
the energy of even the
keenest start-up,

ExpertLink is a new
service aimed at both new
and established businesses.
Run along the lines of the
bulletin board, it provides
access to two teams of
experts, one based at the
University College of Swan¬
sea and the other based just
about everywhere.

The first group consists of
professors and Lecturers
with qualifications in a wide
range of subjects from law to
ergonomics. The second has
an even wider base of
experience - the MicroLink
subscribers themselves.
Many of these run small
(and not so small) busi¬
nesses, and have solved the
problems themselves.

Subscribers can either
post a question for public
discussion or send it Tor con¬
fidential consideration by
the UGS team. And anyone
can volunteer answers, or
pass on a useful contact
name, or even offer a service
themselves.

Quick!

Your tortoise is on fire. What
do you do? This monlh has
seen some more unusual
bulletin board entries, some
of which could conceivably
solve your problem.

For owners of incan¬
descent reptiles, either the

has been doing great things
since its inception. Dis¬
counts for members on a
range of commercial soft¬
ware have been arranged,
and contact made with
several suppliers. It must
also be the only nationwide
discussion forum which is
entirely free from commer¬
cial considerations; I he only
people making the news are
the users themselves.

Tortoise Trust (MAG3633I)
which has been offering
advice and leaflets on the
care of the beasts or the Mer¬
seyside Fire Museum (MAG-
1UU518), which consists of
keen fire engine enthusiasts,
might sort things out.

Other ideas currently
under discussion on the
board are chess games via
Email, a poetry corner, and
genealogy with computers.
Someone's even trying to sell
their latest music album;
while MicroLink has made
nobody a rock star yet
1 here's always the first time.

More mundane matters
managed 1o get sorted out*
like how to send mail to New
Zealand or how tu download
software to an IBM PC. It
just goes to show; all you
have to do is ask.

Shots in
the dark

This page of news has to be
prepared weeks in advance
of publication - an inherent
problem with such archaic
technology as ink and paper.

Things change fast on
MicroLink, So a weekly
MicroLink L'ser Group
newsletter is published on
the system itself. This can
reflect what’s happening
faster, as well as dealing
with individual problems,
provoking discussions
(hopefully!) and giving
updates on new features.

It's called Mugshol. Writ¬
ten by Rupert Goodwins
(MAGDStSIfi) it’s posted nn
the Bulletin Board (>BB) in
the MUG category late on
Sunday evening each week.

It’s also sent via
M i cro L i n k/Tel ecn m Go I d
electronic mail to a list of
people who would rather get
a copy mailed to them than
use Ihe BB, This also means
that Telecom Gold users
who aren’t MicroLink subs¬
cribers can see what they're
missing. Again, contact
MAG95A1G if you fall into
the latter category.

Suggestions of material for inclusion in the MUG Newsletter should be
sent to Rupert Goodwins on MAG95816

P$ge 14

Amstrart UR&rJtifv 1:1 AH

<8> _ NIRVANA

!! NOW SPEEDTRANS PLUS HAS EVEN MORE TO OFFER !!

SPEEDTRANS PLUS2

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Once she program has be on transferred flo (fisc IT WILL RUN ON ANY PC

SPEEDTRANS PLUB3 no* handle* the VERY I^TESTSp^locklypwaulomatlqHlV. No need to hold * toy dawn a( anytime
during loading, SPEEDTRANS PUUS2 also saves 99% of opening acreans and saves them In their lull cotourt

FULLY AUTOMATIC - JUST ONE KEYPRESS * ONLY ONE PROGRAM TO RUN WHICH FINDS THE SPEEDLOCK TYPE
AUTOMATICALLY 1 WILL TRANSFER ORIGINAL AND MANY OF TODAYS SPEEDLOCK PROGRAMS * NO FIDDLING OR
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THE CO R R EOT AMOUNT Of GAM E CODE * SAVES 99% OF OPENING SC REE NS * SCREENS SAVED IN THElR CO R RECT
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BECAUSE OF SHORTER FM_E LENGTHS

SPEEDTRANS PLUS 2 iranstere over 200 programs io Disc, some ottte latest » win da are MADBALLS. FREDDY HARDEST
(both games) BASKET MASTER, MATCHDAY II.PHANTOM CLUB, GRYZCR (main, program*. SUPER HANG ON.

These laie&t Soeec lock typo® can be ktontitted by ihe whole aoreen flae hlng wtm horlrartal bands of tutow immediately after the
first IHe has loaded. Do remember ihai SPEEDTRANS PLUS2 doe* noi save aH the memory in (he hqpeuf having saved all the game,
h saves exactly tne right length oH com . AW icreera are saved ft cc*Tpressed Imwi -some as Ifttb as 4K (Basket Waaler) - (hu* cavlng
even more disc space.

SPEEDTRANS PLUS2: Is the mo*t sophisticated Tape-to-Diac transfer utility tor SPEEDLOCK praieded programs ever
ptibii&had.h w4l certainly transfer more game* lharv any other Sfteedtack iraneter program on the martlet and with much greaserease.
Other (ranefsi programs require you (o know how long the game code It solhal you may run an ahematVa-prograrnttalhe tonggamee
which does not save the loading screen. This Is done because they do non mate use of the extra memory available on the C PC fll2e
or from (he use of and extra RAMP ACK (DK Tronka 64K or greater.^ This program m highly imaf Igent to tha It first reads tva loader
Iram the tape and establrehee which type of protection b in yeefmmfialiamHaiiviBe. Al me end of the load it (hen find* <m how long
the code I* and f it -.* too tong to be saved io one file it will move the excess code into the banked rreimry and save the game in
two pans and wrie She appropriate loader program, The screen wfH also be moved into a bank and oonpreseed before saving. Thl*
can mean screen file* ana s me£ as 4K (Basket Master) depending on mods and consent. AN this adds up id a lot less disc space being
, used than with other If ansierpwqrarre and you will nearly ate ays get the loading screen saved. The exception to (h*fc when there
b no toadtog screen (as In SCRABBLE) or whan the screen Is blanked out and more code ha loaded into tie screen msmory, as In
0MX SIMULATOR and MADBALLS lor saanyjte. Try gefling a screen w*h Multflacaor any other imager. These Imager* sue only
caphfibla of saving what you have In merraryaa the lima the button Is pressed. Whal happens in mull pad games? you have la press
tie button for each pan 'bus wasting precious disc space, They also save far too much coda and therefore waste even more space
and saving too much tods mean* longer loading tines from disc. Progreirmwa are now cheating io sea II you have an Imager
plugged hn and H yew have (he program will not load. Image™ atop have to be in place before you can reload your program and saved
programs can only be reloaded In to the mettiin# in whicfi They are saved, SPEEDTRANS PLUS2 creates totally stand-alone fitoe
and if you have another CPG evm without extra. memory they will run perfectly, it also dispel the saving name on ween at Ihe
sian of the load wHI all except (he very latest games. In all cases the disc saving name is displayed white iha save is car-riod out. To
run the Ue™ier™d game just RUN mis name. Another Intefiigent feature of SPEEDTRANS! is that every first Ihlng h dost Is io find
ou( which drive it I* I n. The means that if you have a two drive system you may run tha program (torn drive B by typing RUN ‘StDISG*
or B ;RL.JN" DISC, However ihe saving win ALWAYS be to DRIVE A so with a single drive you rmwi change the disc; when prwppted
on screen

DISC;- UK £14,99- EUROPE £ 16.25 - REST OF WORLD C17D0
Upgrade yow SPEEDTRANS PLUS - send your disc logaiher wflh: UK E2.00- EUROPE £3,25 - RESTOF WORLD C* 00
Upgrade your SPEEDTRANS TAPE tend your tape together with: UK £12.00 - EUROPE C13J5 - REST OF WORLD £14.00

* LOW LOW PRICES * * LOW LOW PRICES * * LOW LOW PRICES *

ARNOR SOFTWARE

Program

UK ~ Disc

Eprem

PtotextOflke'NEW 1

29.50

foA

Protest Filer NEW*

19.50

Pretext

2150

34.50

Pro spall

19.60

29 50

Promarge (Rom=Plromargft Pkaj

19.60

29.50

Maxam The Best^

2160

34.50

Must 1 1S ‘NEW*

HiA

24.50

Utopia

24 50

Europe-tN sc

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Rest of World -Otoe

Eprom

3075

31.50

N/A

20,75

21.50

22,75

35,75

23.50

36.50

20.75

30.75

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22 75

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PURCHASE THE fiOMHO ROM BOARD AND WE WILL GIVE YOU A FURTHER £150 DISCOUNT OH EACH ROM PROGRAM

ROM BO ROMBOARD

UK - £31.00 EUROPE £33 00 REST OF T HE WORLD - £35.00

DMP 2000'2160'3000 3160

FAST FORMATTER

The printer befler presently in the DM P 2GOOttOOO series its a 2K
RAM. Mostef diis RAM Is used by (he printers ooeralirg system
leaving on average lT?k as boiler space. Our upgrade kit con¬
tains a new sioiic RAM chip which will Increase ihe printer buffer
by 6K (about* page* of text). This upgrade aftcnw all DtMmload
Characters lo be re-dafined allowing (he user Id deci^n apecfai
cfia/actert for use wfui scftnltte and other programs. The ktt Is
Supplied with lull pacanrial HiB-lnjctonB la a ow The amateur tq
carry <m* N* own modification (fre DMP21i€Ci (aw* about 7
mfneiee). N you done think you are up ton your loeafTV chop can
do the inb in approxiirniely 15 rrwmtee

UK £9.00 - EUROPE £10.25 (Lot W, £11.00

The FASTFOMATTER wH( format one side of a disc in approx.
33 second* w»h the choice of DATA, VENDOR or SYSTEM and
Us much easier I hen using your CRM disc.

TAPE:- UK £4.90- EUROPE £5.25 - ft, <rf W, £5.50
DISC UK EH.nc - EUROPE C9.2S - Hd W. C10.0Q

TRANSIT

TRANSIT If m dllC-to-dln; fltei eapter which hendten (Heft Up'Ll

4Qk in length In one pass. It will copy from drKee A-A, A-B, B B
and B-A making an ideal ulHky for use wfth 5 1M 1 second drive.

FlRETRANS

This utility wil transfer a number of FIREBIRD programs from
tope to d^c autcmaticalty toctodmg rrijat opening acieena in luH
ootouf. FIRETRANB will work equally wih from (ape but will be
rmre convieniera (o use if converted to dHc whh SAMSON/
TranamaL It wtlf iraftsfer WILLOW PATTERN, TtuNESTONE.
CHIMERA, GUNSTAR, PARABOLA REALM, SPIKY HAROLD,
BOOTY, DONT PANIC. GLINFRlGHT, STARGLJDER. NINJA
MASTER, HELICOPTER, and bo™ v@si«w of THRUST,
HARVEY HfiADBANGER and BOMBSGARE.

TAPE;- UK £5.00 - EUROPE C6.25 R.of W. £7.00
QfSCl- UK ES.50 - EUROPE £9.75 - R,ol W. C 1C.54

TAPE;- UK £A»- EUROPE E«S - R. of W, M.SO
DISC LIK Ce.OG - EUROPE £9.25 - R.04 W. £10.00

UTILITY DISC No. 1

TTih Utility disc contolna 5 ptodronw, a!- menu driven. They are
SAMSON, TRANSIT, QCLONE, VIEWTEXT w>d the l»( disc
FORMATTER-

CHSCi- UK El5.50- EUROPE £16.75 - tt el W. £17.50
ROM :■ UK £17,25 - EUROPE tlfl.SQ - R,ol W, £l»J5

T PANASONIC DISC BOXES

Have you tried backing up your orgilnaJ expensive dice iotlWate
and felled? Use H IR V ANAbefore Its 100 laiel Nl R V ANA ^meaning
enHgh(enment) Ih an extremely pcmerful disc handling ixllKy
which haa ihe rdk]wv l 'g iMtuiest Disc to disc back-up copier
which wsH handle most of Ihe wmmsvciaJly pnjiectad dlM?
available today. File oapkar lor Individual trie*. Disc lormotter.
much easier to use (hen CPM. Change 11* 4tri?utee. Erase Nee.
Change lilenerriB*. Will handle afl disc drive cornblnalton.

EM SC h UK f 14.»« - EUROPE ClSJS - R. Of W. C 17.00

SHAREPLAY

THE STOCK MARKET SI MULATION
(All cp ere)-

TTiie b a wrtoue edecatlonat pnggram lor 1 to 6 ptoyeta and
provides oil the en joyment of playing thestockmarket without any
risk of personal tMnkruptqyfl Fach player can buy and self shares
and (he target e. the First to reach £1 .OOG.DOO. The program
Includes a Btockholding porholro Ifslkig the- share* purchased,
thair number, awl and market vakw, Bonk baJanoea ora aba
shown. Graphical rep*e*e«taticn tri market lUjqauHilona are given
In che form o* e her graph, Also Induded Is a high score (afAa.
Score* are automatically saved at ihe end of each session.

DISC;- UK £14J9- EUROPE C16J5 - R. of W. £17,00

WORDSHEK _<8».

THE WORDS-EARCH PROGRAM
(ALL CPC’*)

This educational progun wNI tax wen the most agile mind. The
aim m to lind the hidden words In s 15 by 15 puzzle w*hin a set
time Ikrft oil 30 seconds. The time limit is extended lor every
correct letter of the current word found. You may create your own
puzzle consisting of up to IQwwd* which can be saved to disc
and used at any time. You may only roi^n onepuirte at a nme
but If you choose not to use your own puzzle ihee Ihe program^win
randomly select one from the library of 50 on the disc. All of the
puzzles In the Sbwy are made up of 10 wxda each conebltog (i
1 xfl tetter, 1x7 toner 2xSterter, 3x5 tetter. 2x4 tetter and 1 xa toner
words. This ensures equaf difficulty regardtets which one If
randomly boded. The programcontoins a prim opticH : ! (fn E^xm
■wmpadbte prknars) iftcwlng a hard copy to be maos \4 any
puzzle weated. KeytoardfJoyBliA oprio™ are aha ava>ldbb

DISC ONLY:- UK ElA9»- EUROPE E1I9L25
REST OF THE WORLD £ 1 7M

42b

TU NESMITH

TUNESMITMli asImptotouHiound utilty which allows you
to use the- keyboard to play and record your fume. No knowledge
& wok; or Amelrad wund ttoornondf Is reqMred ail yw need to
be able todu Is whlsttethe tuneyoe play or record. The octave and
period of note* is variable and ihe program Includes ayntheslser
and vtortoo effects. tunesmtH wh save any tune os a basic li fe
which can tie RUN, CHAINED or MERGED Into your own

program

DISC ;- UK £14.99 - EUROPE £1*25 R.ol W. E17JB

SAMSON

SAMSON has been dwetoped by us to transfer not only ihe
normal programs but also many of todays where the coda Is much
ianger, SAMSON differs in many ways front other Tspe-lo-Dec
utiltiee, tha main dffp*ancss be^j; * SAMSON retain* Original
file sutflxee {SAMSON. SON will be saved as SAMSON. SON) *
Inproved Die relgctoton method 4 Elaborate Tape-read/Dtic-
wriie ayslem which reduces Tape Motor. Slave Relay and Disc
Drive Motor wear substantially, * A large reduction Intape transfer
time toatooechtowd tool but a low (shim 1 NEW‘SPLIT'optton
for todays tangor games (we will be using this option in luture
routlnes) 1 All hie information Is displayed on screen and can bo
echoed to your printer 9 needed. SAMSON alsotransfers itself lo
due.

TAPE:- UK £7,50 - EUROPE £9.75 - A. Of W. £9.50

DISC >UK £11,50- EUROPE £12,75 R-H W, ElLtt

CHARACTER DESIGNER

(ALL CPC S)

* REDEFINE YOUR PRINTER DOWNLOAD CHARACTERS

* REDEFINE THE COMPUTER SCREEN FONT

a REDEFINE ANYiALL KEYBOARD KEYS (ASWERTYJ

* DESIGN SPECIAL SCIENTIFIC CHARACTERS^FONTS

Trftss all the hard work at of ctwader designing making H a
pleasure. The primer part of the program will only work i your
printer b enable of DOWNLOADING and Is EPSON oonpatbto
- see ywr primer manual. Work* wrth 7-bi( or S-bl output (S-bit
pon). Al the designing b done 'On-Screen r so you con see
exactly what you are doing. You con save your newly designed
Characters to disc and reload Ihem al any time ritg a basic
program and into most Word-Processors. The program also
all owe Ih* user to redefine any pr alt of the keys on the keyboard.
This feature wlR be useful tor (hose who require an ASWERTY
keyboard. The d!*c also- contains twelve sample fonts for experi¬
mentation.

TAPES. UK £7.99 - EUROPE £9,26 - R of W. £10.00
DISC ;■ LIK£ll,W-EUROPEEl3£SRefW,£14,00

COMPACTOR

COMPACTOR wHi allow you to toad a standard 17K screw, set
the motto, border and Ink odour* and than save It as a com¬
pressed screen cofflflfnmg rta own mode and ink colour iniutma-
tlon. Moel screen* compact down to an average of 9K which I* an
enormous saving on disc space. Loading lime d compressed
■craen* Is alao prapoitionately reduced

TAPE: UK£5,00-EUROPE £6,25fLof W. £7.00
■DlSCi- UK £9.50 - EUROPE £9.75 - R. ot W. Cl<150

Hurrtour has It ihsl AmscftPanasonlcno longer supply boxes wih
(heir disc*. We have approx 100C bones rematolng at 25 pence
each, Ftegrflfully we can only supply boxes I acconvanted with
a minimum order lor Softwararturdware of £i 5 .00 ihiIwbs extra
monies arv««ctoeed to cow postage

DISC HEAD CLEANING KIT

Stocks fl# those 3* heed deaiirgktoshrtoWajlrtirawttfllri ihenmt
lew days. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

UK £9 J» - EUROPE £9 50 - R,o# W, £10-00

Please send your cheque (£ Sterling) Eurocheque OR UK P O. fo
GOLDMARK SYSTEMS, 5t COMET ROAD, HATFIELD, HERTFORDSHIRE,
ALTO 05Y. ENGLAND

Please write or telephone 07072 71529 for lull brochure

Amstrsd User July 1983

Page 15

833

—ubm

ADVENTURES

FTER the build up last month for
the Am s trad version of Bard's
Tale, I have still not seen the
final product. What 1 have seen
end played is the "almost ready
to duplicate version'", Thanks to Electronic Arts, I
was able to visit them and get some hands-on
experience of their award winning adventure.

Designed originally for machines with disc
drives only, this latest variant will be available on
both disc and cassette for all CPCs. Some of the
graphics quality has been lost, together with one
or two minor options, but the plot and associated
puzzles remain as they were,

An additional facility will be included to enable
the storing of a very large number of characters
which may be mixed and matched to suit your
needs, and the objects held by them swapped
among themselves,

Bard's Tale is pure action, with plenty of
fighting, tons of interesting objects to find and
use and great emphasis on mapping strange
locations, The plot is simplistic -Mangar the Dark
has taken over the town of Skara Brae and locked
it away from the rest of the World by a spell of
Eternal Winter. You and your unproven
companions must free the city of his evil
presence.

Following Mangar came hosts of evil crea¬
tures; even in broad daylight it is not safe to walk
the streets, Before you can tackle Mangar
himself, you must first train your group in
combat. Only by repeated skirmishes ano battles
can you increase your party's level of experience.

As experience increases so do the character's
hit points and he can then take more damage and
flight more dangerous creatures. Only with a
strong party dare you enter the more dangerous
parts of the town. Needless to say, the clues and
talismans to further your cause are to be found in

the more dangerous areas.

When you finally confront Mangar you will
need to be truly seasoned veterans. This means
shedding the blood of literally thousands of evil
creatures. May your sword remain sharp and
your magic users healthy.

Getting started is a little traumatic. It Es all too
easy to get badly wounded or killed- Temples will
heal your wounds, but the price Es never cheap.
Until your characters are truly battle tested, never
stray far from a temple.

Six characters are supplied within the program,
but you may also create your own. Before you
rush off to do so, check what these six have in the
way of equipment. It may well be worth
"borrowing" some of the more useful hems.

When you create a new character you must
choose its race from human, elf, dwarf, hobbit,
half-elf, half-ore or gnome.

You are then given a set of numbers for the

character's attributes - strength, dexterity, intel¬
ligence, constitution and luck. These are
randomly determined, and if you do not like what
you are given, you may choose another set.

Next you must decide what class of character
you are creating. There are 10, of which only the
first eight are available to novice adventurers:
Warrior, paladin, rogue, hunter, monk, bard, con¬
jurer, magician, sorcerer and wizard. Each class
has different abilities, and as you may only take
out six adventurers into Skara Brae, think
carefully about your choice-

initial attributes are important, but especially
so in relation to the proposed class-strength to a
fighting man, intelligence to a magic user and
dexterity, constitution and luck to all of them.

The action takes place in the narrow streets,
passageways and buildings of Skara Brae. Only
the first three members of your team can directly
engage the enemy. The other three can still

Page 16

Amstrad User Jufv 1988

ADVENTURES

L /

support them or attack by using magic, Spe ; 1$ are
vita! to your success Higher level magic users can
cast spe-ls that will affect whole groups of crea¬
tures, If you are faced by hundreds of foes-it can
happen - this is the only way to get out Stive.

The Bard is a strange character, having both
fighting ability and access to magic via playing an
instrument. Singing makes him th rsly and
between drinks he can only sing as many songs
as he has levels of experience.

This leaves him a pretty weak magic user in the
early stages, although his ability to use magic
instruments can make him worthwhile,

Your fighters must have a strong constitution
to take heavy punishment. They must also have
high dexterity so that they can get their blows in
as rapidly as possible. Tire re are several typos of
fighters to choose from, all will serve you well
arid their spec'al abilities wil improve rapidly as
their levels rise.

Rogues may be useful but their ability to find
and disarm traps may be dupl seated by the magic
users, and as fighters they ere not exactly
inspiring.

You always start from the Adventurer's Guild
in Main Street and on leaving are facing north.
The graphics of the houses along the road a^e
reasonable but the house designs are all the
same, so it is very easy to lose your way, Draw
maps from the beginning and you will soon know
your way around the back streets as though you
were born there.

Killing creatures that attack you will add to your
experience and your purse. As experience grows
you can visit the Review Board in Trumpet Street
and f it is high enough you will! gain a level. This
must be one of your main aims, as an increase : n
level will give you greater hit and se points and
add to one of your main attributes.

A larger number of hit points will enable you to
take more damage and spell points determine the
number of spells that may be cast. Spell points
slowly dwindle as time passes, although if you
Can find floscoe's Energy Emporium you can buy
them back - at a price.

The initial stages of Bard's Tale are not easy.
Each character is given 100 to 150 gold pieces
and you must walk up the road a few paces to
Garth's Equipment Shoppe and buy weapons
and armour. You wil only get fairly rudimentary
items with your low budget, but each item of
armour will reduce your armour class, which in
turn reduces damage sustained in battle.

From the start, money is everything, You need
it to buy better equipment, heal your wounds and
pay the Review Board for your magic users to
learn more spells, Items found on your foes may
be sold at Garth's, but it is a touch and go busi¬
ness. You can, of course, cheat a little by creating
additional members, pooling their money with
one and then deleting the extra characters, Many
adventurers have found this is The only wav to
keep going.

In town streets and buildings you will be
attacked by up to eight creatures and as you
delve into the sewers, catacombs and castle, the
number of assailants will increase. It becomes

more and more necessary to have accomplished
magic users at your back recast btgh evei spells.
Aim to take out any opposing magic users first,
as they can damage your team

A magic user can start out as conjurer or magi¬
cian, each with a different range of spells. As they
progress, they may change their class to sorcerer
or wizard, If a magic user reaches the highest
leve in each class he is an arch mage. These are
much-prized members of your team - aim to get
at least one!

Your goal is to defeat the evil Mangar in hi.s lair
To do so you must visit all the other special areas
to find clues and objects with which to defeat
him.

After you have gained a level or four, attempt
exploring the sewers under the Scarlet Bard
Tavern. Ask the barman for wine, and keep your
fingers crossed. Each level in these special areas
is mapped on 3 22 x 22 grid. Be warned, they
scroll round, if you kept going east, vov would
come back to where you started 1

Map these areas carefully, you must be
certain that you have visiteo every ocation.
Messages written on the walls or spoken by
magic mouths are all vital to yoj- r progress- Once
you have visited at! the levels of the sewers you
can consider enter ng the catacombs beneath the
Mad God's Temple. To do so you wil need to
know the password found in the sewers.

After the catacombs comes the castle ^his is
guarded by a dragon, and only if you are a strong
enough party will you even get one step inside.
From there on keep looking, the clues must be
fought for, but the final reward is worth the effort.

If you decide to try out another class of
character, it may be worth waiting until your
present characters., especially magic users, are at
3 fairly high level. It is then possible to fight bat¬
tles that will give each member
tens of thousands of
experience points, It is then
a simple matter to raise the
useful level of a new
character very rapidly indeed.

Commands are given via the keyboard.

Most are single key entries, but a foui
letter code is needed to cast a spell.

Regular reference to the instruction
will be necessary at first, but you
will very quickly be casting
MAFLs, ARFls and DRBRs with
gay abandon.

Nasty things can happen on the
streets of Skara Brae, so make suie
that you regularly take time out to make
back-up SAVEs of you* characters.

It would be a tragedy to lose
several levels of experience for the sake of
iiTSt a few m.nutes spent making a SAVE

Control of the game is from 0 senes of, easy to
follow menus but it is well worth using the
characters supplied with the game until you are
familiar with their use, It would be 0 pity to lose
your own because you are still learning to handle
the basics.

If you get really stuck. Electronic Arts Customer

Service Department is happy to help on 0753
46465. Also available is a readable due book,
complete with all maps, for E5.

•*■---

Campaign!

L ONG, long ago a proud Lord of
the Isles of the Western Sea gave
succour to groups of Northern¬
ers blown to his land by gales
and violent winter storms. When
the peace of spring came to the Isles, he bid the
visitors leave, even offering them stout ships to
replace them damaged own ones. Having seen
the land's wealth, the Northerners laughed, drew
their swords and elected to stay.

With few fighting men in the Lord's domain, he
had no choice but to accept the situation and give
the unwelcome visitors rich farmlands. Fearing
future treachery, he then secretly planned their
doom. He called on the finest smiths of the land
to create a magical sceptre of great power, Five
years later the dreadful weapon was Teady.

The Lord called together all the Northerners
and once again asked them to leave his lands,
Again they refused. The Lord raised the sceptre
above his head and ca led upon its powers.
Darkness gathered and lightning leapt from the
sceptre, The flesh of the Northerners began to

Amstrad User July 1988

Page > 7

ADVENTURES

smoulder and burn.

One, more maddened with pain than the rest,
managed to get to the Lord and wrest the sceptre
from his grasp. With one fearful blow, the sceptre
fell on the Lord's head and his body became a
whirlwind of white hot sparks.

The burning Northerner now called on the
Powers of Death to save him and his comrades,
The darkness around the sceptre reached out to
them with soothing fingers, but as the wounds
were eased, their flesh was changed and shad-
owy became their form, The Dark Sceptre con¬
trolled their lives, and evil ruled the Isles.

This is the setting for Firebird's adventure/
strategy game Dark Sceptre, Written by Mark Sin¬
gleton (of Lord's of Midnight fame! it has a highly
interactive plot, You control the destinies of a
band of warriors whose task is to find and de¬
stroy the evil Dark Sceptre.

Your party is not the only one on the island
seeking the sceptre. Other bands may be neutral,
friendly or downright antagonistic. Each has a
thane as commander and the groups are made
up of reapers, assassins, fools, thralls, mystics,
savages and heralds.

i i*

Marching orders

QU start by giving each warrior
his orders and then sit back to
await results, Orders that may be
given, cover a wide range of
actions, from "kill any enemy"
or "'stalk umbrarg's herald"' to 4 'protect your
thane" or "guard the shining sword". Just going
out to kill the 100 odd other warri ors o n th e is I an d
will lead to disaster,

Five of the other bands may perhaps be won
over to your side. The sixth consists of the
original Shadow Lords, and will always be ready
to attack any non-evil character. One of the
orders that you may give your stalwart band is
BEFRIEND. It is wise to use this to the full.

Using your mystic, it is also possible to
BEWITCH one of the opposition into being an
unwitting spy on your behalf. The range of pos¬
sible orders is Parge — atmost too great to use fully
until you get a good fed for how the game is to
progress.

The graphics consist of a simplistic background
of that location, with the character you have
chosen to look at in the foreground, Beneath the
graphics window is a command menu, a map of
the character's immediate surroundings,, a
description of the location and finally a graphic
representation of the time of dsy.

The warrior shown is a large animated sprite.,
either strolling past the background scenery or
fighting a member of another party. No random
element is applied during a fight - a character's
attributes are weighed up against the opponent's
to determine the outcome. If they are evenly
matched the attacker wins,

The command menu allows you to graphically
SCAN the position of your party members, to
issue orders (PLAN) and to CHECK on each of
your characters in turn, If a battle is engaged, you
will hear the clash of steel and WATCH will switch
the current display to the character presently

engaged in a life and death struggle, QUIT
additionally offers the options of saving or load¬
ing a game position.

Control is by keyboard or joystick. Either way, I
found controlling 20 characters a cumbersome
operation, with neither method giving a crisp,
positive reaction. Working out the interaction of
over 100 characters is a mammoth task and
presumably the jay stick/keyboard is scanned at a
somewhat slower rate than I would have liked.

Once orders have been issued, you must wait
to see the results of your planning. This can take
sometime, with unexpected deaths complicating
the achievement of your objectives. 1 use an
expanded CPC 464, and the review copy seemed
to have some inhibitions about loading a saved
game position. On one or two occasions it would
not load any game data. Days then passed with
great rapidity as no one appeared to be

inhabiting the island at all.

Available for all CPCs on both cassette and
disc, Dark Sceptre is a fascinating game but it is
slow' to understand and a great deal of patience
will be required to determine the right approach
for any sort of success.

Like the Phoenix

EARS ago there was a superb
text only adventure called The
Lords of Time. Some time after
this came two other acclaimed
adventures: Red Moon and The
Price of Magik. All three were from Level 9, one of
the prime software houses in the UK. Later
adventures from this source had limited graphics
that were more to satisfy distributors than the
players themselves,

Level 9 is like a good claret, improving over the
years. Recent titles are Knight Ore and Gnome
Ranger. Both have a good story line, very good
graphics on machines with a larger
memory and vastly improved parsers,
Level 9 has now teamed up with
Mandarin Software and under
the title Time and Magik has

Pace 18

Amatrari {JaarJutv 1988

\D VENTURE.

re-released the first three titles I mentioned, All
now hava good graphics and the improved parser
and operating system seen on more-recent
games.

Lords of Time is a magical tour though nine
ages of man in search of nine vital objects.
Having found them, they must be placed in the
Cauldron of Time to defeat the wicked purposes
of the evil Timelords. There are puzzles galore
and the plot never lets you rest from this task,
chosen for you by Father Time himself.

Red Moon is about a land where magik works,
but not as strongly as in days gone by, In the past
the moon was crimson red and the source of all
the great magiks. As the moon faded to the grey
we know today, the magik waned. A great con¬
course of magicians created the Red Moon
Crystal as a substitute. Mounted in the Moon
Tower of Baakalos it shone out over the kingdom,
maintaining an island of magik, But the great
crystal was stolen.

The fled Moon is the story of how a magician
(you) recovered this fabulous gem and restored
h op e to the wor I d. A n u m ber of decided ly a g g res-
sive creatures are waiting for you and fighting
them with bare hands is not recommended. Find
a useful weapon and, better still, some armour.

The use of magik is vital to success. To use
spells you must enter a command of the type
CAST ZAP, Each spell may only be cast success-

■ UOrlil- Vat Ct*H !-** ri,
a S', en tin? n^ntdf lfQC
a t iltd I r olW •

fully if you have the object that is the focus for
that particular spell. To CAST ZAP you must have
a jewelled dagger, You cannot cast a sped if you
have iron on or near you.

The Price of Magik is a sequel to Red Moon,
Most of the action takes place in The House of the
fled Moon and the crux of the game is your
search to find and defeat the evil sorcerer Myglar,
There are no pure treasures to find and no score
is given, SCORE is recognised and will elicit a
report on your present sanity and apparent age.

The aim is to learn, and find a use for, some 16
odd spells that will finally enable you to neu¬
tralise Mygiar's powers. Again, a weapon and
armour are useful before you get too involvetf.
Magik will help, but remember that killing might

release your opponents' ghosts, who may not bo
all that friendly towards you in the future.

You may control some creatures, magik being
a definite plus for this, Using the 18 spells follows
the same principles in Red Moon, and Level 9 r s
own brand of humour is never far away.

Comprehensive cine sheets are available, and
Level 9 s are by far and away the best I have ever
seen. Even if you want to cheat heavily, the clues
will only point you in the right direction and not
give you an answer to the entire game.

Time and Magik is available on cassette and
disc for CPC machines and is well worth buying.
All three adventures are classics of their kind and
are not only a good challenge but are full of
humour and clever puzzles,

THE OFFICIAL AMSTRAD USER CLUB

n ryirr\c-^rr\ n mn n rinrrM, ji r i n m n nnrv. ji n rr-i nnrinrtr^n

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The widest range or trended Amstrad approved
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?. One superb mystery disc based gam e.

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Amstrad User Jufy 1988

Page 19

Learning CAN be fun jf

• Use your Amstrad to teach and amuse
your children at the same time.

• Three packages crammed full of
educational programs - and
so easy to use!

• Each program has been
educationally approved
after extensive testing in
the classroom.

Ages 2-5

Alphabet

Colours

Counting

House

Magic Garden

Matchmaker

Numbers

Pelican

Seaside

Snap

Ages 5-8

Balance
Castle
Derrick
Fred's Words
Hilo

Maths Test
Mouser
Number Signs
Seawall
Super Spell

NUMBER SIGNS

Provide the correct arithmetic

sign tmcf aim to score ten out of ten

BALANCE

Leam moths the fun way- Type in
the answer to balance the scales

Ages 8-12

Anagram

Codebreaker

Dog Duck Corn

Guessing

Hangman

Maths Hike

Nim

Odd Man Out
Pel man ism
Towers of Hanoi

HANGMAN

Improve your chilefs spelling with
this fun version of the popular game

ODD MAN OUT

Find the word that does not fit

before your time runs out

Send to: Database Publication!},
FREEPOST, Macclesfield,
Cheshire SK10 4YTL

FUN SCHOOL S95 SSk

Age 2-5 6077/6078
Aqe 5-8 6079/6080
Age 812 6082/6083

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r 3 Cheque- PO made payable to Database Publications Ltd.

Name__Signed ______

Address ----

.Tel:

R107

Please allow up to 14 days for delivery

PROGRAMMING

Reflections

Improve your image with Cy Noble's screen mirroring RSX

T HIS program will reflect a mirror image of
any area or all of the screen, operating in
either the k or y axis, using the CPC's Basic
coordinates, It has been written in relo-
eatable machine code and locates itself just
below HIM EM. It lowers HIM EM to just below
itself after setting up a new RSX command.

The new command s: REFLECT r x r y r width-
,height^. It works in any mode and requires the
following five parameters

x r y Graphics coordinates of
the bottom left-hand
corner of the area to be
reflected. X can be any
number from 0 to 639,
and y is-a number from 0
to 399. (0,0 es the bottom
left-hand corner of the
screen),

width .height X and y coordinates are
added to these so that if
the total width or height
exceeds the screen
boundaries, nothing will
happen, if x is ZOO, than
width can be no greater
than 439; if y is 50, then
height can be no greater
than 349.

z This must be either 1 or G
spectfying either a left to
right I I). or top to bottom
<□} reflection.

it any parameter is omitted, or is outside the
limits specified, the routine returns a Sad Par¬
ameter message.

The first part of the. listing reads the data, pokes
the machine code into place, and calis it. The
machine code occupies fit 280 bytes minus &3E
bytes I&3E is the length of the relocation code
which is no longer required once it has done its
job,

There follows a small routine in 0 mode which
wiii demonstrate the speed and power of the
REFLECT command.

The data statements must start at tine 1000 and
are chacksummed. If there are any mistakes in
your listing you wiii be informed of the line
number to check If you don’t get a line number to
check, but the checksum at the end is st II wrong,
the most likely cause is typing a line twice, often
done in longisb listings.

REFLECTIONS

260

CALL startjStart,start:MEMT)WT HIRE

110

By NobLt

HtrlemSOTD 340

270

Data error in Li n«’; ENt>

130

US:RESTORE; Linsum-B i sun-0;LnM0&@

280

PRitlT'Checksui error: check lines

140

c$u*=59209:progUn-&2&0:rLen=fl3E

130 id 160,

150

start=HIHER-progLemflEMQP start-'

290

PRINT If ok., c.neck DMA Lines.

160

FOR distant TO prog Uni-si art STEP

300

END

B: Un$usi=0

170

FOB b-0 TO T

**** TEST ROUTINE H + *

1S0

READ numS:nui-l/AL< a , ^num£>

333

190

POKE a+ti,nuin

340

10DE BORDER 0,0

200

L insLJF i i nsui+nu.*i: NtKT

350

FOR *=1 TO 12

2-0

READ nu.nS : nun-VAL (" SnumS T

360

FOR y=2 TO 15

220

IF nLi Ti -1 i i s j ■ T“EM PRlNrLine'; Ln;

370

LOCATE x r y

'OK' ELSE a-pragLen'+stsrt

380

PAMRCRNDM2M1

230

In- Ln+10; subfsuhi* lirrsuii

240

NEXT:IF nuMolinsua THEN 270

Vfa.

250

IF susiocsum THEN 28-0

Amstrad User July W88

Page 21

PROGRAMMING

390 PEN(SN0*12)tl

400 PRINT CHN$t207J

410 NEXT:NEXT

420 PAPER 0xPEN 1

430 LOCATE 1,25

440 PAINT ’Reflect )i or f axis

450 Tn$=IN*Ert:IF in3-"THEN 450

460 in$=UPPERl(in$)

470 IF(in(<>X)*ND(inS<>T)THEN 450
480 i=ASC{iti*J-ASCfXl
490 REFLECT,0,33,639,366,;

500 GOTO 420

510 '

980 *+* RELOCATABLE MACHINE CODE ***
990 ( data must start at Lhe 1000 )
1030 DATA dd,6t,00>dd,66,01,0 J y6e,2fc
1010 DATA 00,1t,?f,00,e5,19,dT / c5,2d4
1070 DATA 4e,Z3,U,23,eb,«5,09,23,2d6
1030 DATA 7Md,&6,00,77,23,7e,dd,3d6
1040 DATA 8f,01,77,e1,eb,e1,0b,flb,3i9
1050 DATA 79,b0,20,e3,c3,9b,00,2e,3bfi
1060 DATA 00,Vb,0M«,00,aft,Bfl,B9,2U
1070 DATA 00,ac,00,bd / 00,c7,00,o1,3011
1380 DATA 00,da,00,e4,00,ed,00,f1,39c
1090 SATA 00,*MM5,01,0d,01,26,135
1100 DATA 01,2a,01,31,01,35,01,3a,ce
1110 DATA 01,41,01,45,01,35,01,59,136
1120 DATA 01,5c,01,5f,0T # 63,01,0b,10d
1130 DATA 01,6f,01,b6,01,b9,01,ba,29f
1140 DATA 01,c2,01,c5,01,d1,01,d5,331
1150 DATA 01 ,db,01,de.,01 ,e2,01 ,ea,389
1163 DATA 01,f3,01,fc,01,05,02,00,201
1170 DATA 02,0b,02,0e,02,1 1,02,H,46

1180

DATA

,18

t n

/If

>32

,26,02,2b,92

1190

DATA

,3e

>32

>01

,aa

,00,21,b7,1c3

1200

DATA

/Ed

yd 1

,fcc

>3b

,c9,32,00,393

1210

DATA

j c9

,00

,c3

1^20

CAT A

y 46

,4c

>^5

>43

,d4,00,ea,23!

1230

SATA

,00

>fe.

,05

,c2,c 5,01,28b

1240

DATA

/5#

,do.

>56

,05,ea,53,3b7

1250

DATA

6 4

>dd

>5e,

,02

,dd,56,03y2d9

1260

DATA

>62

>62.

,dd

,6E,36,dc,3d2

1270

DATA

>37

>60.

,02

,i 9,11,90,1gh

1280

DATA

>b?

>ed

>52.

,d2

,c5,01,dd,46c

1290

DATA

,38

r dd

>66,

,39

>22,59,02,244

1300

DATA

>5b

,64

>02,

r19.

,11,80,02,25a

1313

DATA

,td

>52

,d?,

rC5,

,01ytd,0b,466

1320

DATA

>cd

>11.

rOC,

,2i ,60,02,3 c 7

1330

DATA

f cb

>1d,

,ed,

,5b,5e,32,397

^340

DATA

>02

>28

>0e.

,cb,

,3a,cb,1b,31f

1350

DATA

>01

>28

>0^

,Cb.

,3a,cb,1h J16

1360

DATA

ytd

,bc

tCI,

rtd.

,4a,21,68,423

1370

DATA

ySC

,5b

>62,

■02,

,cb,3a,cb,17e

1380

DATA

r2a

,68

>32,

.43,

,cd,4e,0E,20f

1390

D AT ft

,f b

>22

>6a,

■02,

r dd,7e,00,2f4

1400

HAT A

>ca,

,d1

>31i

■ dd,

■21,6c,02,3 d j

1410

DATA

>11

>hc

■77,

■00,fe,0G,3ac

1420

DATA

>03

>11

>55,

■ Eta,

. cd,If,02,221

1430

DATA

>4b

>»2>

.?a,

.68,02,22,254

1440

DATA

>02

>fd

■ 6 6 ,

.02,7*^5,375

1450

DATA

>13,

r’fb

,3a>

67,

.32,47,23,24?

i960

DATA

63.

J2,

>11,

,dd.

cb,

■03,46,20,369

1470

DATA

12.

rdd j

,cb

>30>

4e ,

■2B,29,c5,31e

1450

DATA

06.

,03,

1 17 ,

, c b ,

19>

l®,fb,?9,28d

1490

OATA

r 1 8

>27

,c5,

f5,

■06,04,gb,3S i

1500

WLTA

27.

rCb,

>19

>13>

fa,

06,04,cb,2ea

1510

DATA

>10

>fc

,f1

,06

,04

,cb,1f

,32a

1520

DATA

>11

,10

,fa

>79

,18,0c

,342

1533

DATA

f 5

,a Z

>4f

>fl

>a3

,cb

>39,cb

,549

1540

OATA

>bt

>77

>23

>10

,bc

,2a,68

>2d0

1550

DATA

,cc

>02

,BQ

>4b

>66,02

,2bf

1560

OAT A

>c8

>c3

>5f

>01

>21

,6d,02

,283

1570

DATA

,b7

,c8

,cd

>5a

,bb

,23,18

,41a

15 8G

DATA

f 7

,cd

/If

>02

,ed

, 4&

>66,02

,385

1590

DATA

>39

,ec

>5b

,6b

>02

,2a,68

,34a

1600

DATA

,ed

/«

,66

>32

>7e

>f&>23

,330

1610

DATA

>fb

> 3a

,67

>02

>47

/1a,f5

,304

1620

DATA

>10

>fb

>3a

,67

>02

>47,2b

,233

1630

DATA

>77

>10

,3a

>67

>02,47

,35d

164 0

DATA

/fl

>12

>10

>f b

,2a

,68,02

,2bd

1650

DATA

>4e

>02

>22

,68

,32

,2s,6a

,23 d

1660

DATA

,cd

>40

>02

>22

,6a

,02,ed

,23c

1670

DATA

,66

,6c

,c9,;a

,28f

1680

DATA

,02

,eb

>3c

,ib

>1d

>7c,3c

,30c

^690

DATA

,66

>02

,2a

>64

,32

,cb,3c

,231

1700

DATA

>ld

,ch

>3c

f cb

,1d

,cby3c

>3df

7713

DATA

, Id

>7d

>3c

>32

,67

,32, : 9

,305

1720

DATA

,c6

,08

>67

,d0

>7d

>c6,50

,414

1733

data

b x

>7c

>ce

,c0

>67

>c9

,7c,d6

,4f b

1743

DATA

>67

>fe

>cB

>d0

>7d

,c6,b0

,4f0

1750

DATA

>7c

>cb

>3f

,67

>c9

,30,00

,323

1760

DATA

,00

,03

,00

,03

,30,00

1770

DATA

,30

,03

,30

,00

>0d.

,0a>42

>59

17S0

DATA

>64

>20

> 7 0

>61

,72

,61,6a

,2f 6

1790

DATA

>74

>65

>72

,00

,00,00

,160

1800

DATA

,30

,00

,00,30

cf vantage

The Independent Computer User Group
(ACU) 5ft Bath Road, Cheiten ham G L53 7Hj
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Page 22

Amstrjd User July 1988

David Foster changes
his character and
produces a poke for
a printer porl

T HANK you to all those people who have
written in with more suggestions tor Ruth
Newbury and her problems, I have passed
them on to her Tony Wilson from Glney
says that in addition to using Pretext to keep all
his student notes, he uses Masterfile III to handle
all his mark lists, and also recommends Money
Manager for keeping college accounts. He also
makes use of the statistical program Amstatl
I would also like to thank those people who
have written in saying that they have found this
column useful,

DDM interface problems

Following my comments in
the January issue about
the problems some 464
owners have with their first
disc drive misbehaving
either when they have a lot
of peripherals connected, or they have the disc
drive connected to a peripheral or peripherals,
X 1 Wilson writes asking if there is any solution.

As far as i know, there is no complete solution
to the problem and some interfaces are more
sensitive in th : s respect than others, if it is a case
of overloading the power supply with add-ons, it
might be possible for an electronics expert to
make up an auxiliary power supply to power the
extras, but this is definitely not something for the
rank-amateur, and if you do, any warranty will
most probably go straight out of the window.

Other than that, assuming that all the connec¬
tions are clean (rubbing the through connectors
gently with a pencil eraser deans them up a treat
- Edl and the interface rs connected as dose to
the keyboard as possible. I fear that the only th ing
to do is reduce the number of items of equipment
until the problem goes away.

Some people have found that adding a further

rom to a rcrnn board has been enough to cause
the problem. If this is the case and the rom board
is a Rombo, a partial solution may be found by
obtaining one of Rombo Productions ZIF {Zero
Insertion Force) sockets that plug on to the small
connector on the Rombo. This will allow you to
remove a rom when not required. Using this, you
can change over roms without increasing the
total number in use at any time. You must switch
everything off before doing this though.

KDS Mkl 8 bit port and Promerge

Peter Ceresole has written
about using the KDS 8 bit
port interface with
Promerge Plus, com¬
menting on the fact that the
loader program supplied
with the interface caused problems, resulting in
only garbage being printed. He included a
modified Basic loader for the interface, which
was created for him by Amor and which solves
the problem. See Figure I.

1? 3E5TCRE 10:5rUBOL AFTER 256; 'tEHOR'T
HIMEM-26

23 FCUt Q=n TO in*22:REAB a: POKE g,&:NE3!
T

33 i=0 TO 2iPm q+i,PEEK<£B

&M*i):IIEXT

i3 hi=INTt*/256):Lo=*-^i*256:P0K£ SBDF
2,1olP 0KE SBDF3,hi

50 POKE IB&31,U3:PQKE &BD32,£2B:POKE
&BD33,£Bfr:EALL &BD5

60 DATA £fe,EBa,il7,ieMf5,MMeM0
1,Gee,i01/i0Me5

70 DATA ted,8:7MfM&Med,r&7M«M-0
1,6d,67Mf1

Figure!: Modified KDS Printer Port sal up program for use
yvj'tfi Prom ergs Plus

Redefining characters
on the DMP2GQQ

Roger Paget of Barnet has
entered Eheexample in the
manual, which worked, but
wants to know why the
character is always printed
towards the bottom of the
line, in line with any descenders in characters.

This : s directly connected with the CPC printer
port, which only allows you to send 7 bits to the
printer. So the maximum value that may be sent
to the printer is 127. Consequently you cannot set
the uppermost bit in an B-character grid and, you
cannot send the code required to tell the printer
to use the upper eight pins, as this requires a
value of 128 or higher to be sent in order to turn
the feature on.

Roger also wants to know how to redefine
more than one character.. In order to do this you
must send the complete sequence of codes
again, for each character that you want to
redefine, starting with the 27,38,0 (see below),

The way to redefine characters is covered in
the printer manual, but one or two points are
perhaps not very clear.

What seems to cause most trouble is the fact
that even though one of the printer control code
sequences is described as enabling the redefin¬
ition of characters 0 to 31, this is only partly true,
In reality some of the codes cannot be redefined,
as they are needed by the printer in their normal
form. The code for a line feed, for example, is
decimal 10 and for a carriage return, 13. You
cannot therefore redefine those. The codes that
may be redefined are: 0 to 6,16,17, 2Ho 23, 25,
26, 28, 28,31.

In addition, the printer DIP switch 2-4 must be

►

Amstrad User July 1988

Page 23

set to ON, and the codes 27,73,1 must be sent to
the printer to telf it that, codes between 0 and 31
are printable.

The codes 27,58,0,0,0 must be sent to the prin¬
ter m order to copy the normal characters down
into ram, and the ram character set must be
turned on with 27,37,1,0.

After that the character may be redefined using
the code sequence 27 r 38,0,c,c t 0.,n1,n2,n3 r ... nil
where c is the number of the character to be
redefined and nl to nl 1 are the values required to
redefine the character.

The second zofo in that long sequence is the
attribute byte, and when used with a CPC this
should always be rare unless an 8 bit port has
been fitted, in which case a value of 128 may be
substituted. This determines whether the upper
or lower pins of the print head are used and
without an 8 bit port, only the lower ones may be
used,,

Jim Cater of Plymouth sent me a detailed letter
covering the above points and also enclosing the
codes required to define many of the Greek
character set and one or two others, These are
listed in Figure II.

Figure Ilf gives the codes required to redefine a
number of the characters on screen, using the
Basic SYMBOL command. The remaining charac¬
ters are already defined in the CPC screen
character set.

Another tip from Jim is the way that he deals
with the problem of using these redefined
characters when he is using NLQ. The problem is
that the characters are defined as draft charac¬
ters, so NLO may not be used.

His solution is to only turn on the redefined
character set immediately before the character,
then turn on bold (emphasised! printing, print the
character, then turn off the bold and the
redefined character set. In this way, he gets NLQ,
then the new character printed in bold [to $tmu-

Upha

phi U)

psi

0,56,4,0,4/§M,M,56,0

phf (s)

0,29,34,0,69,3,81,0,34,92,6

pi fS)

0,64,0,124,0,64,0,124,0,64,0

c a its n a

0,127,0,64,0,64,0,64,0,96,0

oitega (s)

56,63,0,4,0,24,0,4, M3,56

feta

0,34,18,1,16,45,62,0,80,32,0

+/-

0,17,0,17,0,125,0,17,0,17,0

sq root

0,0,4,2,1,0,127,MM,0

1/2

120,2,4,8,16,32,73,13,1,20,9

delta

0,6,0,36,73,0,73,54,0,0,0

Xu r

0,0,16,32,3,62,0,32,0,32,0

cneca CL)

0,25,32,7,64,0,64,7,32,25,0

theta

0,28,34,8,65,8,65,8,34,28,0

Figure it: Codes required to produce 3 var¬
iety of redefined characters on the
DMP2000 and most Epson-compatible
printers

delta

60,6,6,60,102,120,60,0

tor

0,0,126,88,24,24,24,0

sq rest

30,30,24,24,216,120,56,24

phi m

60,24,126,219,219,1 26,24,6-0

i eta

28,1£,60,16,8,4,36,24

gsnfna

255,99,95,96,96,96,240,0

psi

24,219,219,255,126,24,24,24

Figure fit: Values required to defines v$riety of characters
on screen , using the SYMBOL command

late NLQ I, followed by the rest of the text in NLQ.

There is now no longer any excuse for any
budding mathematicians/scientists not being
able to produce top quality results.

Indents and double line feeds

D.Steen from Cornwall has
a problem with his Cosmos
80 printer, which indents
the occasional line in the
middle of a document. As
the problem occurs with
more than one program and with Sasic listings, I
cars only assume that the fault is with the printer
la model of which I have no experience!, and
would suggest that the service agents are asked
to look at it.

Green and Baffled from Bury St,Edmunds is
suffering from the old double line feed problem.
As his printer is an Amstrad DMP3000, which
comes with a cable suited for use with the IBM
PC, I assume he has either modified the cable, or
obtained another one. Almost certainly, the prob¬
lem is caused by pin 14 being connected. The
solution, as mentioned In earlier columns, is to
disconnect the wire connected to the pin marked
14. Try it first by sticking a small piece of sticky
tape over pin 14, reconnecting and testing.

Exporting data from Masterfile 111

T.Western of Coventry is
having trouble exporting
data from Masterfile II! for
use in Protext, He finds the
instructions in the Mas¬
terfile manual confusing.

Masterfile provides flexible export facilities and
allows you to create export files in a number of
formats that may be used by many programs,
When you select the Export option you are asked
to specify the field reference for the first field you
wish to export and then any default text.

Default text is that which should be exported if
the field in the database contained nothing, You
might, for example, specify NIL to be sent if a
field contained nothing, but usually you would
just press Return.

Having specified which fields you want to

export, and their order, you are asked whether
data identifiers are to be sent. These are the let¬
ters by which each field is known in the database,
preceded by an ampersand (&), You would nor¬
mally only use this when exporting to a program
that required them for mail merging, one of the
few being the Tasword word processor. Other¬
wise, you would specify N for No,

The next question asks whether LF (line feeds)
are to be sent as well as CR (carriage returns) at
the end of a fine. In most cases, the answer wiM
be Yes,

The next question asks whether line breaks are
to be edited. Masterfile II! allows you to save
multi-line fields of data by separating each line
with an underscore symbol. When exporting for
use with other programs, you would normally
specify that you want them edited, in which case,
each field will be sent as separate lines, with the
underline character converted to a carriage
return, or a carriage return and a line feed depen¬
ding on your answer to the previous question.

Another option asks whether you wish data to
be comma delimited., Comma delimited means
that each field of data will be wrapped in quo¬
tation marks and separated from the next field by
a comma, with each complete record occupying a
single line.

This is usually only required for importing data
into certain other databases, such as dBase II. or
for some mail merging programs when the con¬
tents of the database might contain commas or
quotation marks which would otherwise confuse
the mail merging program. For a simple text file
the answer would be No.

The final question asks whether a soft EOF is
requ ired. Th i s deter mi nes th e way Chat the end of
the new file is marked, and in most cases the
answer should be Yes.

At this point you are asked to give a name to
save the export file with and Masterfile will write
the specified data fields to the file.

That about rounds up the questions and
answers for this month, It is very pleasing to get a
steady stream of questions from readers, so
please keep them coming.

Basic reading

I have always found Ian
Sinclair's books to be very
readable and there is one
called Programming the
CPC464 lequally applicable
to the 6128, in nearly all
respectsf, which starts right at the beginning and
another called Advanced Programming on the
CPC6128, which progresses further.

Page 24

Amstrad User July 1388

"There's always an easier way...

/ w i I

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the multifont LC24-10 from Star.

Offering excellent quality output and exceptional
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As you would expect of a printer from Star, ease of use
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And when you need to answer the phone you can
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The incredibly versatile LC24-10 gives excellent
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u tt im fj-r a
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rsts'te. ■.i;: , -.M,'. . ...-htJ&zrit'**

our d i x ud chi- it . r i»r t.lii* yi'Ar

H- M ■ I ■■ .1 ■ .i l. , C |- 'jlllll ' ll

* Mill >1 •" I a .8 '■■■ ■ I I I ! > I'lWH Ih'l Lr-i ■ I I iM-> t

1 li w t 'i i> .> >i tatir iitir'i .

1 I 111s-1• f ikru.i/il K ii **■■■■ t | |ii| irM'J ( lafH ■

Vui.T •. i nC (• I - . .

.rH'iri'Mij Jlrixiil

WORD PROCESSOR
Compose a letter* set the
print out options using
embedded commands or
menus* use the mail merge
facility to produce personalised
circulars — and more!

■ -f :£

DATABASE

Build up a versatile card index,
use the flexible print out
routine* do powerful multi-field
sorting* perform all arithmetic
functions* link with the word
processor — and more!

LABEL PRINTER
Design the layout of a label
with the easy-to-use editor*
select label size and sheet
format* read in database
files, print out in any
quantity — and more!

Mini Office II oilers the most comprehensive, integrated
suite of programs ever written for the Amstrad - making it
the most useful productivity tool yet devised.

A team of leading software authors were brought
together to devote a total of 26 man years of programming
to the development of Mini Office II. What they have
produced is a package that sets new standards in home and
business software.

The sample screenshots above illustrate just a few of the
very wide range of features, many of which are usually
restricted to software costing hundreds of pounds. Most are
accessed by using cursor keys to move up and down a Ust of
options and pressing Enter to select.

Is it that easy to use? Several leading reviewers have

already sung its praises on this very point.

Yet possibly the best advertisement for Mini Office 11 is
that it comes from the same stable that produced the
original Mini Office package back in 1984.

That was so successful it was shortlisted in two major
categories of the British Microcomputing Awards — the
Oscars of the industry - and sold in excess of 100,000 units!

It was up to Mini Office II to take over where the first
Mini Office left off, with 32 extra features, two additional
modules, a program to convert existing Mini Office files to
Mini Office II format, and a 60 page, very easy to follow
manual.

This is the package thousands of Amstrad owners have
been waiting for — and at a price everyone can afford!

SPREADSHEET

lota] columns or rows with
case, copy formulae absolutely
or relatively, view in either 40
or 80 column modes, recalculate
automatically — and morel

GRAPHICS
Enter data directly or load data
from the spreadsheet, produce
pie charts, display bar
fe charts side by side or

stacked, overlay tine
and more!

graphs

ff COMMS MODULE

p Using a modem

you can access services
such as Micro Link and
book rail or theatre tickets,
send electronic mail, telex and
telemessages in a flash - and more!

atchedf

Iff}

■ ■ j' *. h j 1 “n>= 7 ■

ll :p ■; | ... 1 .

fetal* «:p 1SI

Ail In ||*Ufc> .

-.,1 ’i r <!■■!»•# 1 •*

II-:?

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cfp. nu Mh Ml,

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l id Jiri [."I.!*,

1 nr !•• •

fl-fl: ii imp (HI

. i i ih H.II.4MI

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4 341 .LHP WP UN

lOrflBili.'

'l-lr<:«ivm 1114' . .'HP

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Here r & what some independent reviewers My about Mini Office IF:

Menus throughout the program abundant and well structured, allowing
complex choices to he made with hardly a glance at the pocket-steed spiral-hound
manual, and offering a wealth of user defined functions ., - For the money it
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packages may offer some extrafacilities, hut some are so full of whistles and bells
you may find yourseffforever in the manual or even not using half of their power.
What you get with Mini Office H is a valient attempt to provide an ail-embracing
small business package at a down to earth price; itfulfills all its promises, and
there's nothing cut-rate about the facilities it provides. ■ Tubtltnlk/Vi*wlM 2 SS

Amstrad CPC 464, 664, 6128

Cassette ... £14.95

3" disc ... £19.95

Business Program of the Year - 1985 AND 1986
'"Popular Computing Weekly’

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15 pac ri? nrnressor, database, spad¬
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t g*pM“ dtepfe taW Q d well

to getV same range of

^ bought separate P ro S « mS

n other Mn[ ., Hmne Comm tm ^uiie.

BASE SOFTWARE

• Si:

A FTER last month's look at writing things
to the screen, it seems only natural to
spend some time looking at how to read
things from the keyboard. I know if you
use your computer a lot you might find that
difficult because the letters start to wear off the
keytops, but that's easily solved with a hot pin
and a book called How to read Braille.

The type of reading I was actually referring to
was scanning the keyboard using software to see
which keys are being pressed.

There are two main ways to check the keyboard
for keypresses, namely real-time and not real-
time. If you are writing an arcade game then
obviously you will need a realtime check on the
keys, and you will also need to be able to read
more than one key at a time so you can go left
and nuke-the-furry-little-gibbles at lalmost) the
same time.

If you are writing a text input routine, then you
can use the not real-time version, because the

computer doesn't need to be doing anything
when It is waiting for you you to press a key.

We are lucky because firmware routines to do
both are just sitting in rom waiting for us to call
them.

Incidentally, did you know she keyboard is
scanned using the input/output port of Arnold's
sound chip? Course you did, silly me. Once I
connected about 20 metres of doorbell extension
cable to my joystick port to make something that f
could use in a quiz game. Each competitor had a
switch wired to the computer and was checked
for by a program that decided who pressed their
switch first. Ail was going fine until the very first
quiz when, five minutes before the start, the come
puter went Neeekkkkf Phut.,, and died,

With all that capacitance about, the cable I'd
connected decided to build up a charge and zap
my little sound chip. Sniff.

So out with the soldering iron and sweetie
cigarettes, and me and my mate Green unsol¬

dered the soundchip and put another one in.
There is a moral to this story but I can't remem¬
ber it. Something to do with buffering inputs to
the joystick port probably.

"What about scanning the keyboard?" \ pre¬
tend to hear you cry. And why not?

A casual, almost cursory, and decidedly cool
glance at the Artisoft Firmware Guide I available
from all good stockists) will provide you with at
least five calls that look feasible. My favourite
ones are 2:KM WAIT CHAR I#BB06) which
returns an Ascii code in the A register, and 1 Q:KM
TEST KEY (#BS1Ei which when given the key
number Inot the Ascii) sets the zero flag false if
the key is pressed and true if it isn't

I won't insult your intelligence by telling you
which is the realtime, and which waits. As there
are two different calls, two examples should suf¬
fice to enable you to use them in your own pro¬
grams. Both use subroutines you may lor may
not).find useful in later life.

Page 28

Amstrad User July 1988

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j&et charistjr pc-imed to by 1l.

;is it 3* (the #ne iarF.tr?

; i f it ii, t h PH return J rpr sjbnm tin*.

; It eijt, urry m ard dispUjr ?■■( shar^tEr.
;iHo>e Hi, (p pgifi* to rE>:t IftiriEtl’',

;J j«p bitk.

jTl-■ s riunn* ffKdt a string Thinctt' n>' phjracttr trtij* tf*t kfy&oq-d,
■eiHcss it tt- the jEfeen ana puts it f’TS * bLack uf lEiary frfilfl&tc tc
;h y H_. Tht tr.try ij, ts'iinated 11 fitber K*(^n is prESEEd, Of
jnunbf pi fccped: &B. Art fC.c yl Itfing larkEr (if-fi] ij

; instr ted at eA!) $i tht TBit.

;Ths hfiNSre roiiti pel tat_Du5puE and viit.kty irs Jiffi.

;Re gi s[ftS HL, 9 ard *. #re ccrruptid.

;$?; Ldcc courtEr,

jSf: prasiEd.

ilt it 4 fturn!

.sTep, tfid retire,

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;Rcke it -n?5 dpf fec,
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Program IS

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la.-ng a blob using tht hn^jri rput'rifi.

tr-3 Hl!00

tEsE.iev fdu ttbl*
tit.outpul ten tssS'i

SET Be ds E-q-J i t '■ d I

?ei_tursgr tpb Sab?1
Ld i ,1

.s e 3 ■ l a' ccdr

jFinaapa ■d<j['R;e fc -:heck a key.

; V.t eid faunurctE tfjit put pint routine,
;ju1t lilt t 9fS'C ED**and.

; i- j 51 h It a Bat'd L<KATE,

;Ue wart teds 1 (take iy uPrd ffir ,:;.

Program I

urj g-B

«ai l_tty eq j tbb‘H
td output rdu IbbSB

r &'spLay tS"E iESia#t,

,d H,L f Mp lCo»E
call pr i n !. 31 ■■ I n g

;Stnn 9 lihitli if deiinac Larfr or.
j User defi ppJ lut"0 j; irj F

jRrad t uye f'd kEfbcarfl,

Id h.,buffer
: a I i i nau t s S r ng

;Sna« spec 1.3i. Ly rFSe-tvrd ititry.
; i, no t h e r subroutine.

.d tUminii
clLL priii'.ii'i ng
Ld

ca.L print.SCring
L d h L,SItin k1
•:ai. srrt.smrq

f£T

jPfiintj te sate :hararte-s fhjt ail; iwap
jpen fine C-afitr,, and so diso.ay 'n inverse,
;Pc-infs to she test tyaec in,

; S! s p'. t y ■ t.

jHust raptit SHJPping P*pe^ and pap dtf&re
;bef crp I 1 ini shlmQ. that if ue didr t?

; i. 1 1 or p to EaSu,

;*** SjbrournES

Km Wait Char

This Fs the key routine that waits for you to press
& key (drat, 1 r ve given it away!I, The exanrtpte
program uses the routine to allow the user lo
type in a string of Ascii characters from the key¬
board, store them in memory, and then prim
them out again,

Exciting, you think. Yes I know, real cutting-
edge stuff, but the routines could be used in an
adventure game, or to input a name for the high
score in your latest epic.

Program I is listed in standard 280 mnemonics
ipronounced ne-nom■ mort-nom-om-orn-om-ix]
which you must type into an Assembler to make
any use of, I know we’ve had this conversation
before, but to learn machine code yew need an
assembler.

Figure I shows the psuedo-code for Program I,
so you can see what's going on, There are some

points to look out for. The normal cursor is not
displayed on the screen, which makes it look a bit
odd, and the Delete and Escape keys don J t do
anything except make little patterns appear. You
would have to write another routine to cheek for
these in the same way that code 13 (the Return
key) is checked for. The computer keeps waiting
for characters until either 80 have been typed in.
or Return is pressed.

Km Test Key

As you would most likely use this routine when
writing an exciting, if-it-moves-kih-it game, the
example in Program II shows you howto use this,
and other, firmware routines to move a blob on
the screen from left to right,! expect you will see
it in the arcades soon.

Figure II shows the pseudo-code for Program II
Although other firmware routines are used in this

example, none of them should cause any prob¬
lems to clever people like yourselves. You'll
notice That the program runs much faster than
anything you could write in Basic. You might like
to try and slow it down by putting FRAME
FLYBACK calls (call SibdlBl into the main loop.
This will also reduce any flicker.

Other things to try include adapting the pro¬
gram to run in mode 2 r and trying to display more
than one character at a time, say a 2 x 2 washing-
machine made from User Defined Graphics.

You should also note that by changing the
numbers in the check left and check right routines
you can check for the joystick being used

p;:....hj /mnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnm

1km .....k

cccccccccccccccccccnx bvn, Sorry about that., my
cat walked over the keyboard.

So, we have looked at reading and writing.
What's next? flithmetic of course! But that's next
month.

Amstrad User Juty 1988

Page 89

PROGRAMMING

call set-*ode

A nd this tail ui U da it-

;{hetk to ifv if hi.ct is

as far right as passih.e.

;Check for key ngiber

[the i key) and charge kfq 5 if so.

;Sll the KP05 viriebLe !,e the ncdLe

:£'ase me redisplay the blob,

Ld UppsT,!

j dH Che screen.

Ld a P 1 stpos!

Ld i,U

; T h i 5- sets the f LAG variable co ierg.

tp IB

Ld (flagf,*

;FH6 is used to see if fsc it pressed.

ret z

;if XPOi^ig then return fro* $fr.

CiLL pi- H n t_b L ob

; These are it | f-eip Laoetcry, aren't

Ld a,43

t«LL check-left

call test key

call check-right

ret i

;if key not pressed then reurn i ret if r.

call check.esc

Ld a, [flag)

; Check FLJG. 11 it's nnn-rern then

call er*«_htob

Ip i

;est has been pressed.

Ld a,(irpcs>

jr Mono

i 3 f its zero, loop back.

fnc a

;31PDE=IP0S + 1

L d C k pos ? r a

ret

Return Cc- Basic.

SSlF (rint.oleb

;Byl££ let aside tc hold

yarl abl.es.

ftt

;Return fro* sfr.

;Chf(i fur Image

Uy, setting (fUgjrl n gressed.

;**+ Subroutines ***

;

id a,66

till tett.iey

;Chetfc to $** if blob is

as Far left as pcssiole.

r*t i

jkrturn fro-i s^r if etc rot pressed.

; Ct.eck for key nuiber ?1

(the I keyr and change SPSS if sa.

;Erase and redisplay the bleb.

id i H s

Id £ f L J g), I f R

Return

1roi s/r.

Id j H Cj(pps?

te 1

; t r a k a space pve ■

blob at .:>?d5>.

ret j

;if JPGS = 1 then return froi subroutine.

Ld a^fipos?

id i r 7l

Ld' h r a

rail test-key

Ld l,tfl

ret i

;if k*y not pressed then return frga r h.

call set-cursor

c*lL erase blab

Lc? a,3?

;ascii :ade f o ■ a space.

Id aligns)

call t>t output

dec t

;jtFSS**POS-l

id (ip&s),*

ret

;Re turn fro» sfr.

call print,bLcb

ft///

end

;[nd of progrib. jSjEft

ret

;R*turn J rpi Subroutine,

Page 30

Amstrad User July 1988

I HAVE tried most word processors available
for the CPC-from the original Mini Office to
the CP/M oldies like Wordstar - but I had
never tried Brunword, so I was pleased to be
given the 612& version to test.

For your money you get an A5 sized manual
and a single disc containing the programs, which
consist not only of a word processor, but include
a spoiling checker and a datafile program.
Available at extra cost is a program called Disc

side of the coin, one or two fairly basic features
are missing.

How well does B run word work?! have to admit
that even after using it for a period, I still don't
find it a particularly easy program to use. I think
the main reason is that the commands used to
ca^ry out editing functions are called in one of
three different ways.

Some involve the use of function keys, a
method that \ don't like as I always find it difficult

trol and left/right cursor will move to the begin¬
ning or end of the text; the screen may be
Scrolled with Shift and up or down cursor key.
and about two-thirds of a screen can be
"jumped" with Control and the up/down cursor
key, Beyono this you are on your own.

There are no facilities to move to the start or
end of a paragraph or a page, nor to Go to to a
specific fine or column.

One extremely Irritating feature of cursor

Three in one

Flexibility and power are important in a
word processor. Bill Tomlins puts the
latest version of Brunword to the test

Extension which links in, and lets you do such
things as format and copy discs from within
Brunword, It also provides the facility to archive
and retrieve files to and from tape.

The 40-page manual appears to have been
produced with a good quality dot matrix printer.
The first 22 pages are devoted to the word
processor and spelling checker, the remainder
mostly to datafile and mail merging.

Unfortunately there is no index, nor
appendices summarising the commands, which
on occasions makes it hard work to find which
command you require. However, the manual's
content is good, and does describe all the com¬
mands. It includes worked examples, but I am not
too sure about the order of things, particularly
without the benefit of an index.

The word processor provides the expected
facilities to enter and edit text, i nsert printer con¬
trol codes, justify text and move, copy and delete
blocks of text around a document It also boasts
one or two other unusual features which you may
or may not consider to be useful, On the other

to remember which key does what. Other com¬
mands are called by pressing the Control key and
another key simultaneously, while yet a third
command involves pressing the Escape key and
then following it with another key - or, alterna¬
tively, pressing the Escape key again to obtain
the main menu.

The problem is that while in most cases the
keypress have been logically chosen to the extent
that, for example, Control-L is used to set left
margin and Control-R the right margin for a
complete document., temporary margins for a
paragraph are set with ft and f2-

Qne surprising omission is that of the "delete
line" command. You can delete single characters
with CLR and DEI, and words to the right of the
cursor with Control-D, but the only way to delete
a complete line is by marking it as a block and
deleting that There's a facility to undelete single
words, but not blocks of text,

Movement round the text may be carried out
with the cursor keys. Shift plus left or right cursor
will move to the beginning or end of a line; Con-

movement is that when you move the cursor up
or down your text, as soon as you come to a
blank or part-filled line the cursor jumps as far to
the left as it can. This means that you are const¬
antly having to move the cursor across from the
I efi ma rg i n if yo u m ove back up the text to co rrect
something and happen to cross a paragraph
break in the process.

The maximum size of document that can be
handled at one time is between eight and ten. A4
pages of text, but facilities are provided to link
files at print time.

Insert and Overwrite mode are both provided,
and when you insert text into the middle of a
document, as each word gets pushed off the end
of a line it moves down to the start of the
following line. While this keeps things tidy,, it can
be a little distracting to see the text beneath
where you are working shuffling around all the
time.

The Tab key may be used to move the cursor

►

Amstrad U$&rJuiy 1988

Page 31

across to user-definable tab locations, but
Brunword seems to do this by inserting ordinary
spaces into the text, so if you change your mind
about a layout of columns of figures you are
lumbered with deleting a lot of spaces.

Care must also be taken with using the justifi¬
cation commands, as they can easily destroy
special layouts you have created, There is a
rather laborious way around this, as Brunword
provides a ’’'hard"' space - produced by pressing
tt - that cannot be altered by justification.

Text may be right-justified if required, but this
1$ not the automatic process it is with most pro¬
grams, The procedure is to type in your text,
which will appear with a ragged right margin,
then either use Control-W to right-justify the
whole thing, or Contra I-B to justify 3 paragraph.
When you justify the lot it is displayed on the
screen a section at a time, a process which takes
a few seconds.

You can un-justify text, either by paragraph or
wholly, In addition, you can work with inset left
and right margins, This is done on a temporary
basis, paragraph by paragraph, which means you
have to reset them every time you start a new
paragraph. You can also centre complete par¬
agraphs marked with temporary margins by a
single keystroke™ useful feature.

Blacks of text may be marked, using f6 at start
and end of a block, and once the section has been
highlighted you may delete it, copy it or move it
to another part of the text.

Ram files

You may also make use of one of Brunword's
special features, saving blocks, or for that matter
the whole document, into any remaining space in
memory, You have to name it, and Brunword
creates its own internal directory of ram files,
This assumes, of course, that there is sufficient
room. If not, you are warned of the fact,

These ram files may be recalled and merged
into the text at any time, or re-loaded in place of
an existing document. When you come to save a
document to disc you are asked whether you just
wish to save the current text or the other files in
memory as well. This facility is unusual and does
have uses on occasions,.but with the speed of
disc drives, 1 wonder whether it isn't safer to just
save them on to disc. (One unusual feature of
Brunword is its ability to save files in encrypted
form if a security code is specified first.)

Find and Replace facilities are provided and
these allow ygu to search for a single word, or a
group of words, and replace it or them with an
alternative. Only the replacement text is case
sensitive - so it will always replace with the case
you specify - but it will find all occurrences,
whatever their case.

Printing it out

Printing facilities are quite good, and you may
insert control codes into the text to turn different

printing effects on and off, They are set by default
to Epson-compatible codes, but may be changed
to suit your printer. These are not permanent
changes, though they are saved with the text, so
the solution is to save a blank file which will
contain only the printer codes, and load it before
starting a new document. Not ideal, but it works.

When printing you may specify the page length
and the left and right margins, and also set
headers and footers. You can specify whether the
page number is to be printed in a header and
whether it is to be to left, right or centre, but you
may rot change them during the course of a
document, although a different one may be speci¬
fied for odd and even pages. You may afso spe¬
cify the starting page number and, optionally, the
pages you want to start and finish printing.

You may specify a set of printer codes to be
sent to the printer before printing commences.
This may be used to send "reset" codes, or codes
to turn on NLQ, or whatever you want,

You may also link together of separate files so
that they print as one long file with page numbers
running through. This is done by creating a spe¬
cial link file containing only the names of the files
to be printed, preceded by a ine containing three
ampersands. Headers and footers may only be
changed when a new file is printed.

The Spelling Checker

Brunword is supplied with a dictionary of about
30,000 words and there is room for a further
5,000, give or take a few.

The reason for the limit is that it is loaded into
memory before checking starts. The result of this
is that the checker is fast ™ very fast as long as it
doesn't come across any words it doesn't know.
When it does, it pauses and you can choose
between saving the word to the dictionary, con¬
tinuing without change, or editing the word.

If you choose to edit you are returned to the
normal part of the program and can correct the
word. You then have to re-start the check by
pressing the Escape key, then X and X again. If
you make a lot of spelling mistakes this slows
things down a lot.

Alternatively you may ask for Help, in which
case firunspeli will search for any words it thinks
are suitable and list them on-screen. When you
see the one you want you may press Escape and
select the word from the list with repeated cursor
presses, finally inserting it into the document by
pressing T. You can then continue.

There appears to be no way to view the con¬
tents of the dictionary, but you can remove a
word by typing it in the text area, followed by
pressing ft). If you then use the spelling checker, it
will remove the word. If doesn't just remove one
word, but the whole family. For example. Help,
Helped, and Helping are the same family, and
deleting one will also remove the others.

Single words may be checked during the
course of text entry by pressing the f3 key. if you
haven't yet loaded the dictionary, you will be

prompted to load it the first time you press f3.

If you have added any new words to the dic¬
tionary you have to remember to re-save it to the
disc before switching off, something which is
easily done,

Sorting data

The Datafile program provides a simple card-
index type of database into which you can enter
names and addresses and other details.

As long as you enter data in the recommended
format, the program can make use of it in a semi-
intelligent fashion, depending on whether it is a
company name or a person's name. You can sort
the data into order and you may find or select
according to criteria you specify and then save
the selected items to a "quick" file, which may
then be used for merging and printing,

Facilities are provided to print from within
Datafile in a variety of different formats, or you
may elect to carry out a mail merge using
Brunword. This is done by resetting The com¬
puter, reloading Brunword and then merging a
further program called Datalink into it. You then
create your document in the normal way, but
insert special codes into the text to mark which
data field you want entering at that point.

Layouts are therefore quite flexible and you
can, for example, arrange to print address labels
with more than one label across the page, a fea¬
ture lacking from some database programs.

When merging of data is taking place the text is
automatically rejustified as printing progresses
to make sure that any gaps or overflows of lines
are corrected.

Conclusions

Brunword is undoubtedly good value for money,
but only you can decide whether, in view of its
intended use, its shortcomings are outweighed
by the benefits.

My opinion is that it comes midway in the
range of word processors. It provides a lot of
features, some unusual, but it also seems to miss
out on a number of features which I fee I are basic
- such as the ability to delete lines,

If ygu use complex layouts or need a word
processor that has flexible editing facilities, I
wouldn't recommend it. But for occasional use
and straightforward letters - assuming you can
remember the commands - it is certainly a lot
better than many.

Brunword 464/6128
Brunning Software
34 He Is ton Road
Chelmsford
Essex
CM1 5JF

Phone 0245 252854
Brunword 464/6128 price: £25.00
Optional disc extension .- £7-50

Page 32

Amstrad User July 1283

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FEA TURE

Rim Writer

Peter Green lets you in on the agony and
the ...agony of commercial programming

W HEN you buy a program, load it up
and start zapping, how often do you
think about the work that went into
producing it? The blood, the coffee,
the sweat, the coffee, the tears and the coffee?
Freelance programming is not always a bed of
roses - in fact it more often resembles the stuff
you dig in round the roots.

Towards the end of last year I had invested a
great deal of time in projects for not one but two
software companies who had subsequently
ceased trading, and cash in my pocket was
becoming a fond but faint memory. So it was off
to the PCW Show, demos in hand, to tout for
business.

The most promising interview was with Palace
Software, the Cauldron, Antiri&d and Barbarian
people. There were no machines spare on the
stand to run my demos, so I was asked to visit
Palace at their old offices over the Scala Cinema
in North London the following week.

It was at this point that the Great Universal
Probability Function smiled on me. One of my
demos was something l r d been playing with as a
possible original game in conjunction with a
computer graphics designer I'd worked with
before. He had sent me a lot of backdrops that
he r d drawn for a Spectrum game which was
abandoned by the commissioning software
house - are you beginning to get an idea just how
unstable the software industry is? - and won¬
dered whether 1 could do anything with them.

The graphics were drawn in perspective and
beautifully detailed. It seemed a shame to use

them simply as backdrops. I hit on the idea of
splitting them into a pair of planes, one fore¬
ground and one background, so that sprites
would appear in front of the background, as
normal, but disappear behind the foreground.
This emphasised the depth of the graphics and
my simple demo program looked very effective.

f showed the program to Richard Leinfeliner,
Palace's Technical Manager, and Pete Stone, the
MD, and described this clever idea l r d invented.
They looked at one another, and said: "There's
this game we r re working on ceiled Rimrunner-
we were only going to release it on the Commo¬
dore, but now you've got something similar
working on the Amstrad..." The rest,, as they say,
is history.

An everyday tale of Insect folk

Rimrunner is set in that rather crowded region,
beyond the farthest reaches of the galaxy. The
nice guys, called Insectoids, hang out on some
really neat planetary systems which would be
real garden spots were it not for the Arachnoids,
who have this great idea they've discovered
called genocide.

The Insectoid colonies are protected by force
shields produced by hovering generators,
however Insectoid warriors must patrol the
perimeter of the colonies to recharge the
generators or the shield will fail. This is a continu¬
ous job, like a Chinese magician spinning plates,
although not many magicians are required to

perform while under attack by kamikaze Ar¬
achnoid minions.

The ftim runners use dinosaur-like mounts to
carry them into battle, racing from generator to
generator to maintain the shield. On screen, Dino
stays central while the background scrolls past
him, The more distant the scenery the slower it
scrolls, It gives a-perspective effect.

Programming Rimrunner has been interesting,
not least because the above game description,
the graphics data, and a few chats with Steve T
am NOT a programmer" Brown 1the game de¬
signer), is all Tve had to go on.

Difficulties with the early version of the game
meant that the Commodore version was being
re-programmed in parallel with my conversion.
On a couple of occasions I've completed a piece
of Rimrunner to discover it isn't quite whet wes
intended. At times like these I smile grimly and
wonder if Steve, who perfects his character ani¬
mation by studying videos of himself frame-by-
frame, would like any help with the Barbarian II
decapitation sequence,,.

Data day problems

The first thing to do was to port all the data for
the graphics and background maps for the main
game and the inter-level screen from the Com¬
modore 64 to the Amstrad. At the time (Novem¬
ber) there was only one way to do this - the
dreaded FS232, the "standard" serial interface
with so many variations that software engineers
have been known to gnaw off their own hands
rather than attempt a match between two differ¬
ent systems.

Astonishingly, this stage of the operation gave
us almost no trouble at all. We simply plugged a
standard null-modem cable between the Com¬
modore's add-on serial port and the
Amstrad's BS232 interface, wrote a
ittle bit of Basic at the Amstrad
end to fetch characters
from the port

Page 34

Amstrad User July 1938

and write them to a disc file, and the three binary
files went across first time.

It was when I got home and wrote a bit of coda
to display the Commodore format graphics on
the Amstrad screen that 1 realised a large section
of the Dioo sprites had somehow been corrupted

When 1 went back to Palace for another try and
looked at a screen listing of the file, I saw it was
full of Commodore Basic keywords. Somehow -
we never found out how - part of the Commo¬
dore rom had been copied down over the
graphics before we ported it across. Ail part of
life's rich tapestry...

Hard and fast

As I've mentioned, Rimrunner was originated on
the Commodore 64 and was intended to stretch
that macfiine r s hardware facilities to the limit

Even when used without any programmer's
tricks, the Commodore provides eight hardware
sprites which can have three colours, appear
either in front of or behind the background
graphics and have automatic hardware collision
detection between sprites or the background
graphics.

In addition, a register on the graphics chip can
be programmed to give a hardware screen shift
of 0 to 7 pixels, and as the low-res mode only has
four-colour graphics Itwo bits per pixel), the
graphics can be stored in half the space that the
Amstrad requires |16 colours need four bits per
pixel),

What makes Things worse is that the Commo-
do re has programmable raster interrupts, that is
it can be set up to generate an interrupt at. the
start of any desired screen scan line. You can use
several interrupts, and at each one alter the
sprite/background priority, reprogram the sprite
registers to apparently produce more than eight
sprites on the screen, scroll different sections of
the screen by different amounts, and generally
push the machine past limits that its designer's
probably never dreamed of.

On the Amstrad ■ everything - sprites,, scrolling,

modified - page-aligned tables.

For each of the possible 256 Commodore
graphic bytes, four "result bytes" are needed: the
mask and graphic for the left and right bytes of
the equivalent Amstrad screen pair. Rimrunner
has four 256-tables, each set up so the nth entry
is the required result for graphic byte n.

However, the tables are aligned on page
boundaries, so that the zeroth entry has address
xxOQ, the last entry has address xxFF. To do the
conversion the Commodore byte is loaded into
the L register and the H register is set to the page
for the first table.

Now, without any other calculation, HI points
to the mask byte we need. Incrementing H, one of
the fastest ZBO instructions, now steps the poin¬
ter to the other three values we need.

This powerful technique for speeding up
access to tables is so useful that it features in
some way in almost all the other routines in
Rumrunner. For example, the sound module that
Palace provided used the IX and iY registers to
access its data. I rewrote it using page- aligned
variables, saving 500 bytes of code and making it
run much faster.

Once the sprites are on screen, you have to get
rid of them again! Normally the technique is to

►

collision detection -- has to be dgne in software.
And even hand-crafted machine code cannot
beat hardware-programmable facilities. Cunning
stunts are the order of the day.

There are three basic areas to tackle, First, the
sprites.

Page-aligned tables have to plotted into the
screen using the "and mask/or graphic" system
to overlay them correctly onto the existing
background graphics. However, the entire screen
update routine is going to end up taking several
TV frames. The scrolling strips alone take up one
entire frame - that's one fiftieth of a second,

i have to have two screens in use, one to be
displayed while the other is updated, and switch
between them in hardware by setting the screen
base. (The same technique is used En Starghder,
among other programs!, Two screen buffers of
IG&eaeh means that half the Amstrad's memory
is gone before I've written a byte of code.

Obviously I can't store the graphics in their
expanded Amstrad format, and 3 can't store
masks for each sprite to remove the background.
My only possibility is to use the Commodore
graphics directly and write a runtime routine
which fetches Commodore graphics bytes and
looks up the correct pair of masks and Amstrad
screen bytes to use, This routine must obviously
be optimised for speed, and Richard Leinfellner
suggested an approach which I used and

Amstrad User July 1988

Page 35

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Prohibition....

.11.95

Renegade .

..11,35

Revenge of Dom..

.11.9S

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Scrabble Deluxe...

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Star Wars.....

.. 11.95

Sttvgjlid«r.......

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Super Heng-On.

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__13.96

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.11,96

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.11.95

Time and Maglk.

..11,95

Tranter.

.11.35

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Fun School 5-B years . , .. 7.96

Fun School 8-12 years 7.96

World Wise.,. , . 11.95

Animal Veg. Mineral .. 1 1 .35

Answer Sack Jnr Quti .... . 11.95

Fact Rie Spelling .. „,7.95

Fact File Arithmetic .. 7.95

Fact File Sports . . .. 7 95

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21.96

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Promange........

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,,43.95

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Intro to CPM+.

.,.7.35

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. 895

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THE ABOVE SOFTWARE IS ONLY FOR THE AMSTRADCPC RANGE
PCW AND PC OWNERS PLEASE WRITE FOR DISCOUNT PRICES

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Tasword 8128
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Tel: (0462) 32897/420847 for enquiries/Credit Card orders

Pape 36

Amstrad User July 1988

FEA TORE

save the screen data in the rectangle where the
sprite is to be placed, then copy the rectangle
back to the screen to remove the sprite. With
memory so tight., and speed at a premium, I
needed a different solution,

I made the subroutine that draws the
background on screen from its character map as
efficient as possible imore page-alignment), so
efficient that it can be used to erase sprites by just
regenerating that section of the screen
background.

Although the Amstrac has a hardware scroll, it
is useless here because it affects the whole
screen. I needed to scroll different areas of the
screen by different amounts, so what's the fastest
software scroll?

Wet, two art'cles in ACU, one by ZZKJ and one
by Justin, suggested two possible approaches.

In his article on 32-row text screens on the
Amstrad iJanuary 1988), ZZKJ showed how to
fool the 6845 video chip into displaying two
separate screens together at once. OK, thought I,
let's try giving different hardware offsets to the
two screen sections. Then part of the screen will
hardware scroll and the rest won't, r:ght?

Wrong. This is one straw too many for the poor
6845, which promptly has a nervous breakdown, I
couldn't find any combination of register values
which worked consistently on one machine, let
alone on different Am at rads. It meant giong back

to the drawing board...

Justin's Scroll I June 19871 Is the one I used.
This employs the Z80 block move instruction to
shunt u■ the screen data along, but uses a whole
sequence of single LOI instructions (16 clock
cycles per byte shifted) instead of a single LDIF
(21 clocks per byte).

Five clocks may not seem much, but multiplied
by the large number of bytes I need to move, this
gives a considerable speed increase at the
expense of memory (always a tradeoff in .pro¬
gramming!. Rimrunner has a subroutine of 160
ID I instructions which is called once per screen
line to scroll The two-character-high background
strip, and cal led twice per screen line to scroll the
four-character-high foreground strip,

Of course, the relevant sections of the
background character map have to bE scrolled
too. and the new edges of the map and screen
■illed in with the appropriate data. Also, when
Dl.no turns around and runs in the opposite direc¬
tion, all the LDIs are overwritten with HDDs to
reverse the direction of scroll,

Although this means Rimrunner couldn't be
sold on eprom cartridges, there realty isn't
anything wrong with using self-modifying code
in this way. If it's efficient, fast, works, isn't a
confusing piece of spaghetti code and solves
your problem, then) say the hell with critics,
One thing I had to give up was The very slow

scrolling of the sky backdrop. This looks good on
the Commodore but just wasn't feasible in the
conversion. Sometimes you have to know when
to quit.

The story so far

As I write this, Rirwunner is almost finished, but
memory is starting to get tight As it is I'm tucking
bits of data and variables into the 48 bytes of
undisplayed screen memory at the end of each 2k
block.

It was just impossible to fit all three levels into
the Amstrad at once, so lucky Amstrad games
players will get an extra level, with two on each
side of the cassette.

It's going to be a cracking game, which has
forced me to invent a lot of new techniques and
stretched my programming to the limit. The long
working days have often drifted into sessions
lasting til! three in the morning - not forgetting
the Monday morning i had to take a cab to Palace
at 4,30 am to intercept Pete Stone on his way to
France with the latest version and sit in King's
Cross with the bag ladies until everyone else got
into Palace at 9.30-

You still want to be a programmer?

NEW

■■

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WOPS

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SOFTWARE, Room A2, 37 Westmoar Road. ENFIELD, Middlesex ENT 71 E,

.4,01:5 trad User July 1988

Page 37

MOTION CARRIED...

Alastair Scott discovers how a Camel can turn you
into a wimp without giving you the hump

■ A A OPS is Camel Micros' acronym for
IRI their windows operating system. It
llll works in the wimp environment
I V much loved by writers of games
with pretty pictures and no plot, Whenever you
change a disc, the new disc is catalogued and a
pointer appears,

To do something with a file, you move the
pointer over the filename using joystick, mouse
or keyboard, hold down the Fire button, move the
pointer over the relevant icon and release the Fire
button,

So to archive an entire disc to cassette you
would click the Disc icon and carry it to the
Cassette icon. To list a file to the screen, you
would carry the filename to the Screen icon. You
could make a 27 -shade screen dump by carrying

the Screen icon to the Printer icon and entering
the filename of a picture stored on disc. The
screen colours could be set first by clicking the
Control icon and using the Wops' l INK. a r b
command.

Terse manual

The program is nicely presented, and easy to use.
The manual is disappointing - it clearly caters for
those who know quite a bit about disc matters,
and is lacking in detailed explanation of how to
use the options,

There are a few problems with the program.
The most serious is that forgetting to disable
expansion roms before you run Wops wf11

eventually cause it to crash, Unfortunately, disab¬
ling all expansion rams obviously prevents the
Control icon recognising any external commands
except the Wops and Amsdos ones.

The pointer (the P in Wimp) is a small, black,
equilateral triangle, It flickers like mad when you
move it and is gene rally annoying. The oracle
(John Keneally of Camel Micros) speaks: "The
pointer isn't ideal. We will be improving it rr .

Due to the small size of the main window, the
sector editor can only display IGD bytes of a
sector at a time, instead of the more normal 256
byte half page, and editing is frust rating I y slow
due to an awkward input routine.

To charge a value you have to move the cursor
over the byte in question, press the Fire button
lor Return), enter the replacement byte(s), and

Unbeatable value

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CPC6128

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Financial management software for personal and/or small business use

Money Manager is an easyto^se system for recording all financial transactions, and tor analysing mem in a number ol very powerful ways in order to fad Irtate sound
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check bank statements, keep track of expenditure, monitor cash flow, make budgeting forecasts, prepare business financial statements, paaly your bank manager,
convince lbe tax and VAT inspectors, avoid nasty surprises, etc. etc ?

f 2 months of entries are kept ina fife stored on your disc. At any time, you may load a fife Into the computer memory, add to or edit the entries, analyse toem, print sf atomenls,
andlben save the updated file for rater u so. Entries may be historic {tor record keeping) or forecast (tor budgeting). You may h ave any number ot sepa rate files, and make
copies of files lor archive purposes, You may advance the period covered by a file month by month

Up to 100 separate transactions may be entered per month. Each

entry consists of:

• lire day of themonth, e.g, 23rd of June,

• An account nurrfcer, one ot up to 9 defined by you to suit your
circumstances e g. Barclays, 2»Visa , 3=HaiFfa* etc.

• Reference, e.g. ABC123 for a cheque number or invoice reference.

• A class code, one of up to 50 defined by you to suit your
circumstances eg hO#Hou9*holdexpenses, hi ^Mortgage,
h 2 -Rales or pO-Ptoduction, p i-Paw materials, p£-Assembly,
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• A description so Ihat you can see what each transaction was tor,
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• An optional single character mark which you may include for
further classification, e.g, b-business, p=phvata, etc.

• The amount of the transaction, which may be pfus or minus.

• A marker to indicate whether the entry is exempt, zere raied or

laxable tor VAT, or alternatively toe actual VAT paid. _

You may select categories according to accounl, class and mark (e.g.

all entries, or all motoring expenses Tor business using a credit card,

etc,) and produce reports on (he screen or primer as follows:

• Full detailed statements, showing each t ransaction (or any month
orlorlhe whole year,

• Detailed monihty VAT statement showing inpul andouipul
amounts exckje&ng VAT, the actual VAT and toe toiai amount, plus
totals and nel VAT due.

• Tables showing the totals in each class for each month of the year.

• Tables showing the totals in each class (or each account.

• Tables showing monthly maximum, minimum, average balances,
turnover, cashflow etc.

• Bar graphs of any category monlh by month

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PdHt& If}

Amstr&d User July 1938

REVIEW

WPS

3 ■EBT IE I Bin.

copy X ) (FOMi X m ) f hb.

PRINT]

0mn0 0

Tfoe toons'
/ij'didlflin secret

press Return. You can't just type in replacement
bytes under the cursor, as is the case with most
sector editors.

The header information should, ideally, be
available with the File scon, not relegated to an
obscure place in the sector editor, (John

THE ICONS’ HIDDEN SECRETS

Keneelly: "Something we'll think about,
certainly",)

On the positive side, the program is crashproof
and the copying and formatting programs are
outstanding. The provision for users with extra
memory is one good reason for buying a

rampack. Wops has obviously been designed
with mrnimaJist users in mind (464 owners with
64k and one disc drive], but is flexible enough to
cater for those with extra hardware.

The tape-to-disc archive is superb. You can
copy both sides of any disc to a single C6Q tape,
and retrieve it whenever you want.

The icing on the cake, however, is the way
one-drive disc operations are tackled. The pro¬
gram can automatically detect when a disc is
removed and inserted, so there are no "Put disc
into drive A then press any key" messages.

Conclusions

If you only have the CP/M disc copying programs,
or a disc utility that turns its nose up at funny
formats or lacks some of the options I have
mentioned, Wops is recommended.

Camel Micros is known for its outstanding
after-sales service. It promises to, and does, con¬
sider any sensible suggestions for additions to
Wops, and will make upgrades available at a
nominal cost,

DISC

The heart of the program. This icon gives
access to various options, which are separate
routines loaded from the master disc which
(temporarily) replace Waps.

The disc copier copies an entire disc to
another disc, reformatting the destination
disc if appropriate. On a single drive system

most discs can be copied: using only two or
three disc swaps. With 256K extra ram you
would only need to swap discs once. There
may be problems, however, using the Disc
Copier on a 6128 with two disc drives.

The fast formatter formats and verifies a
disc twice as quickly as the CP/M utilities, I
believe extended formats allowing over 2QOK
per side will be added in a later upgrade.

The file copier copies many files in one go,
and very quickly, too. Wildcards are per¬
mitted,

The file editor allows you to load in an Ascii
file and edit it it is a simple text editor. Your

revised copy can be saved or printed.

With the sector editor you can edit the disc
directly, and search for strings of characters.
Each sector is mapped, telling you the physi¬
cal layout of each sector. You can find out
where a given file is stored on the disc, and
see its header information,

The sector contents can be viewed and
edited in hex, decimal or ZBO opcodes, and
can be printed out in full. There is an option
that lets you automatically follow a file across
the sectors it uses on a disc, as apposed to
simply moving sequentially from sector to
sector or track to track.

CONTROL

In theory, this allows you to use RSX com¬
mands held in expansion roms. In practice,
using RSXs other than the standard Amsdos
ones will probably end in a crash, but the
option is there if you want to try it You might
get away with it, but the great majority of
Utopia commands, for example, ended in

disaster. However, Wops sets up some RSXs
of its own. Examples;

t SPEED sets cassette save speed (1000-4000
baud),

I MEMORY allows you to use any extra
memory you have fitted. If you have a 256K
Ram pack, entering I MEMORY 16 will allow
you to copy any disc in one go, l MEMORY 4
allows you to use the 6128's extra 64K.

I PRINT allows you to send control codes to
the printer.

I TRACKS allows you to format a disc with
up to 42 tracks per side instead of the normal

Off

The three icons around the main window
return you to the disc catalogue [OFF}, scroll
the main window up or down (for easy move¬
ment through large directories], and direct all
output to the printer (PL

DUSTBIN & OPEN DUSTBIN

Allows you to erase and unerase files.

OUT

Returns you to Amsdos or CP/M, With the
Amsdos option, Ctrl+Enter is redefined to
produce RUN"WOPS" so you can re-enter the
program with a simple keypress.

Amstrad User July 1988

Page 39

►

G A L

D P

^ L

r i

’Will

C ▼

C H

R T

** c
£ o

Non-mover

Down

New entry

Ghostfausters fetertro/r/c

1.99

Great f Inn, threat music, gr&al price. Shame about
the conversion.

■

100

Steve Davis Snooker j9/£?i?on

- 199

Theonginal full-price version h&ssobJ over taO.OOO
copies Co date. Tests thy fcuemanshrp of wen the
most expert player

The Way of the Exploding Fist Ricochet

199 ^4

-—--.---■

The karate game which started it atJ, IK+ is better,
but this is a cheap bit of computer game history.

Trap Door Alternative

199

*n«rk r Druk and Boni Star in a game which is still a
firm favourite with the Rawlins family. Great ani¬
mation but tricky to play.

Pro Ski Simulator Code Masters

1.99

Still on the piste, but a poor gamy by Code Masters
standards.

BMX Simulator Code Masters

1.99

A totally RAO game for those with a penchant for
pedahing. Jump the ramps, racy a friend, GO fOfi
IT, Bean around a very, very long time, and rfs
climbing the charts again.

3D Starfighter Code Masters

Billed as the first shoot 'em up from the Oliver
twins, a surprisingly deep budget title with solar
systems to levigate around and convoys to
defend.

r s ’“

Running out of steam this one, and deservedly so.

Platoon

9,95

Gimmicky and bloodthirsty Ocean title, Very hard
to get into, but still good.

Grand Prix Simulator Code Masters

1.99

Why buy Super Sprint when this bhrttFf- and

cheaper? Why buy this when Jet Bike Simulator is
so very much better?

LA Swat Mastertronic

199

Patrol the streets, watch out for muggers and
terrorists, shoot to kill,, but try to avoid innocent
bystanders Awfully boring, and on the way down
after just one month.

Skate Rock Mastertronic

1.99 ^^5SS

Bubble Bus programmed mode 0 game. AH skate
and no rock. How did it get this high up the chart?

Super Stuntman Code Masters

199

Wot no Simulator? A reg: wreckejs yarns where
you score bjg points for spectacular crashes.

1ME

Predator Activision

9.99

The game of the Schwarzenegger movie. The
name's bigger than the game, and about as boring.

Fruit Machine Simulator Code Masters

1.99

AN the 'un and flashing liyhts for a one-off budget
price payment. Apart from that, |ust like the reai
thing.

Jet Bike Simulator Code Masters

199

The must playable raring game on the CPC. Great
courses, top notch collision detection.

Dizzy Code Masters

199 0. 1

Budget Sorcery. Not exactly the Darting's finest
hour. Sometimes price doesn't matter. In this case
two qy d can b& better spent elsewhere.

Pope y e A iternative ^

199 jSSggr

-„- ^

Fun and frolics with Bluta, Olive QyL at al. The price
is right.

36 ^

Soccer Boss Alternative

199

You too can be Bob Maxwell and control the whole
first division rf you like. No options to buy teams
from rock stars though. Simple but absorbing.

Ghost Hunters Code Masters

199

Early Olivers' spritey game. Well liked, but begin¬
ning (o iuok a little dated now. Wave bye bya.

“Yes, it’s the very latest, the industry compatible Multi-font
LC-10 from Star, there are features included as standard not

“What V this - a new printer ?”

found on printers sometimes twice the price,,.

Oh really- like what?

me! - so you dorft have to
fiddle with DIP switches -
t a built-in push tractor
Hl for lo w form tear-off.

■L And you don’t even

have to take the tractor
paper out to autoload single
sheets with the LC-10\ paper
parking. There’s a large 4K
1 buffer - i t’s even got six NLQ fonts

as standard. It prints at a realistic
120 cps and has a really fast NLQ
at 30 cps’*.

“Hey, that sounds good y hut what
about quality? You V have to ga a long
way to heat the print quality on that
NT-JO y o u W got f \

s True, hut they’ve even
improved on that
and you can change
all the residen t fonts
at the touch of a
button”.

“Hmm, that’s ^
really easy-£229
for all that? I
wonder if my
dealer will
have any

Star Mi cronies UK. Ud.,

Craven House, 40Uxbridge Road,
Ealing, London WS ZBS.
Telephone: til-840 1800.

A division of

Star Microtitcs Co., Ltd.,Jap,m.

f ---- - - --- ---

\ Fd like to find out ifm y dealer has da y left. Please send me art LC-10 brochure □

\ Please send me details of the Star ratine of dot matrix printers □ Or just mil Belinda
I onGl-$401829.

I Name _____— Company. _

I Address __

I Telephone.

Postcode.

LC AU7j

Fnce exd VAT,

Joining the
communications

ken easier ... or

can link your
e world outside
}fficial MicroLink
cations Pack

The MicroLink Communications Pack, with its powerful
modem and CPC lead, is designed to allow you to go online
with the minimum of effort. All you have to provide is a phone
and a CPC interface (If you haven't got one already we also
offer an Interface at a very special price and a very special
extra - it has its own comms software already built in!}

You'll also be given a unique invitation to join MicroLink,
with FREE registration and telex validation (normally costing
£15), and a month's FREE* connect-time to your MicroLink/
Telecom Gold mailbox. So you can find out for yourself what
MicroLink is all about without it costing you a penny.

Of course you can also use your MicroLink modem to access
thousands of other services all over the world, from Britain's
Prestel/Micronet to giant databases in the USA, As well as
innumerable privately-operated bulletin boards throughout
Britain that cover a vast range of subjects,

To take advantage of this very special package deal simply
complete and mail the coupon opposite.

There are two options you can choose from:

no speeds - 1200/75 end 300/300, Fully BAST approver^
it satisfies most users' requirements for a modest price. inti, VAT

MicroLink multi-spaed modem:

This offers the additional speed of
1200/1200 full duplex for users who
went super-fast two-way transmission
Plus many extra features,

M including powerful
U auto-dial and auto- y |
answer facilities.

* This exclusive :■ ft nr relates
ru connect Unit- only end
does not include telephone
any possible PSS ch&rges
or surcharged services

modem

product

ORDER FORM

Micro!.ink is Britain's fastest-growing electronic
mail service . It offers ALL the facilities of Telecom
Gold - together with a wide range of features
that are exclusive to Micro Link.

With MicroUnk you can link up with other users
ail over the world to send and receive electronic
mail. ft turns your CPC into a telex machine -
without the need for expensive equipment or
special phone fine. ft lets you send tefemessages
for next-morning delivery to ANY home or
business in the UK or USA.

With MicroUnk you can tap into a weather
satellite and see pictures from space on your
CPC screen. You can use it to obtain legal and
financial advice , to order flowers or book theatre
and rail tickets , And it lets you swop ideas with
thousands of other CPC users on Britain s busiest
and most entertaining bulletin board.

With Micro Link you can receive free CPC games ,
utilities and other tele so ft ware programs over the
phone to feed into your CPC. Your can use it to
turn text into typesetting or Braille. You can fink
in seconds to a database in New York , or key info
the 400,000-word Great European Dictionary in
Luxembourg. And it gives you direct access to
up-to-the-minute financial information on every
company in Britain.

The software which comes free with each interface is the
acclaimed Commstar f a rom-based package integral with
the hardware, it offers an easy-to-use Ascii terminal pro¬
gram, including XModem fife transfer. A fuliy-featured
Viewdata facility makes this the most comprehensive CPC
comms pack on the market - and at a bargain price.

PLEASE SUPPLY:

l‘l MicroUnk dual-speed modem
. and CPC lead for £99

□ MicroUnk multi-speed modem
and CPC lead for £169

□ R5232 interface incorporating Commstar
comms software for £55

□ FREE registration and telex validation, plus
FREE one month's connect rime to MicroLinfc
or

□ I am already a subscriber to MicroUnk

If you would like to join MicroUnk and already have a
modem and software simply tick the box alongside.
You will then be sent full details Of how to join.

□ Cheque enclosed made payable to
MicroUnk Communications Ltd

□ Please debit my Access/Visa card number:

Signature.

Name ..

Address. .

.... Postcode

Daytime phone.

Send to: MicroUnk Comm unications Ltd,

FREEPOST, Macclesfield, Cheshire $K1Q 4YS.

Telephone orders: 0625 879940

Orders by Prestef: Key *89, then 614558383

Via MicroUnk /Telecom Gold: 72:NIAGD01

Allow 28 days for delivery
R106

Alt prices include VA T
& carriage (UK only).

MASTERFILE III

FOR THE AMSTRAD CPC 6128 (ALSO CPC 464/664 WITH I3K TRONICS 64K RAM)

FIRMLY ESTABLISHED

MASTERFILE III is now firmly established as
THE filing system for the CPC6128. It has received
rapturous reviews and we could paper the walls of
our new offices with our customers' letters of
appreciation.

For the benefit of newcomers to the CPC machines:
MASTERFILE III is a powerful and flexible data
filing and retrieval system. All “database" systems
require that your data is organised into fields and
records. Unlike most* MASTERFILE does not
commit you to field lengths or formats * since ALL
data is variable*length and optional. Files are not
pre-formatted, and only used bytes are saved to
disc. Also, unlike the rest, MASTERFILE allows
multiple user-defined ways of viewing/printing
your data. And unique in its price range, MASTER-
FILE offers RELATIONAL FILE options, where¬
by common data can be entered just once and
shared by many records, Maximum field size is
240, maximum fields per record is over 50, and
maximum file size is 64K. Room for 1,000 full
names and addresses, for example. Only one disc
drive is required. It is menu-driven throughout, and
comes with detailed illustrated manual, and exam¬
ple files.

SO VERY VERSATILE ...

Just about ANY kind of information can be
handled by MASTERFILE. You can EXPORT the
data to other systems (e.g. PROTEXT/MERGE and
TASWORD), You can even merge your own USER
BASIC to MASTERFILE for customised file
processing, or build new files from other computer
sources. The speed of SEARCH of MASTERFILE
is second to none. Records can be sorted ascending/
descending, character or signed numeric, even
embedded keys such as surnames. Other functions
are field-toTield calculations, and several-across
label printing. .We simply don't have room to list all
the features; give us a call if you are still in doubt
of the power of MASTERFILE Ill,

ALL THIS POWER...

This is no toy thrown together in BASIC and half-
tested, but real machine-coded computing power
professionally constructed. We have had IBM and
Apricot users beg us for a MASTERFILE for their
machines — when they had seen the earlier CPC
MASTERFILE, All this power is yours for
£39.95.

For those who already have an earlier MASTER-
FILE, we offer updates; please telephone for
details. You will be amazed at the performance
improvements and extra functions.

*** PCW users: be patient, MASTERFILE 8000
will be ready early in 1987

MASTERCALC 128 SPREADSHEET

We also have one of the fastest and friendliest
.spread-sheet programs around, MASTERCALC
128. Its special features include: individual tailor¬
ing of column widths and precision; relocatable
formulae; split-screen option; automatic cursor
advance; text output to printer, or to disc for
interface with PROTEXT or T AS WORD; hi-res
graphic histogram of any three rows, MASTER¬
CALC 128 runs on CPC6128, or CPC464/664 wi th
DK tronics RAM. The price is just £33.00

hrtUirr ' r fi t I

S l+Ftnirif

SPECIAL OFFER

You can save £10 by taking MASTERFILE III and
MASTERCALC 128 for a combined price of just
£62.95,

Prices include VAT and P&P to anywhere in
Europe. Elsewhere please add 20% for air-mail
service. ACCESS/VIS A/MASTERCARD welcome,
written or telephoned, quoting card expiry date.
Make cheques payable to “Campbell Systems".
Our normal response is return of post, 1st class.

CAMPBELL SYSTEMS Dept. (ACU)

7 Station Road, EFFING, Essex CM 16 4HA,
England. Tel: (0378) 77762/3.

R£AD£R -

—sunvey

O How old are you?

[j Under 12 d 13 to 16 D 17 to 25

D 41 to 50 □ 51 to 60 □ Over 60

Q Are you:

26 to 40

IS ANYBODY

many hours a day do
pend at your computer?

Once again your annual help is needed to help form our edi*
tonal policy for the next twelve months, Amstrad Computer
User is your magazine, and we want to produce the magazine
you want to read Please fill in the form and post it to: ACU
Surveyi. 169 Kings Hnad, Brentwood, CM 14 4EF.

□ Male 1 I Female □ Mot bothered as long as the sun shines

Q Games software reviews

You own or intend to buy:

Already

Intend

Already

Intend

own

to buy

own

to buy

□

IZ] CPC 464

□

] DDM

□

n CPC 664

□

] FD-i

□

CH CPC 6128

□

□ Modem

□

C Colour monitor

□

D Printer

□

[II PCW 8256

□

d Rom board

□

PCW 8512
PCW 9512
PC 1512
PC 1640
BSC Micro
Commodore 64
Spectrum
Amiga
Atari ST

Which 3 programs
spend the most
time loaded in
your computer?

Rate this month's articles from
0 (the pits) to 10 (wicked):

• Are the games reviews:

□ Too d eta fie d □ About right □ Mot detailed enough
O Are the games reviews:

□ Too long FI About right □ Not long enough

• Are there enough game screen shots 7

□ Yes IF N-0

• Would you like Id see the games ratings system changed?

□ Yes D No
II Yes r how?

Q Business software reviews

• Are the business reviews:

Too detailed n About right Not detailed enough

• Are the business reviews:

C Too long Q About right □ Not long enough

• Would you like to see ratings system brought in tor business
software reviews?

□ Yes F No

If Yes, how would your system work?

□

News

Letters

Hairy Hackers
Gallup chart
Adventures
Reflections Listing
LSB

Applications Advice

□

Rosie Tutor
Auntie John
Rim Writer

Games reviews:

□

Stairway tq Hell

Enlightenment

Fruit machine Simulator

[3 How much of ACU would you like
to see devoted to various topics?

Less

Same

□

Games software reviews
Business software reviews
Educational software reviews
Hardware reviews
Hardware projects
Basic programming
M/code programming
Other language programming
Communications
Game maps
Program listings
Other_____

Amstrad Computer User

• Are you a subscriber? □ Yes □ No

• Are you a user dob member? □ Yes □ No

• How many issues of ACU have you bought in the last 12
months? □

• How many other people look at your copy of ACU? □

• Which of these magazines do you read?

[ 1 Popular Computing Weekly □ Ace

□ Personal Computer World n Beano

□ The Games Machine □ Computing with Amstrad

n C+VG □ Amstrad Action

• Which computer shows do you go to?

• If you were the Editor of ACU, how would you change it?

Amstrad User July 1988

Page 45

T HE tent cursor is very familiar to us
because we are used to seeing it repre¬
sented on the screen as a square or rec¬
tangular blob. To position it we use the
LOCATE keyword. The range of coordinates
used with LOCATE differ with which mode you
are in, but, whatever the mode, you will supply a
column and a row as the position to display a
character on the text screen, The top left pos
ition is 1,1 and the bottom right position, in
mode 2 r Is 80,25.

We have another cursor, the graphics one,
which is not so familiar because it is invisible to
us. This cursor operates only within the graphics
window, which on EMS iearly morning startupl
exactly overlays the whole of the visible text
screen.

This graphics windo w h a s a ve ry different coor¬
dinate system to the text screen, and it is welt
worth taking the trouble to familiarise yourself
with it.

ORIGIN xpo$,ypDS

The origin of
the CPCs

Stop monkeying around at the back. Jeff Walker
is here to show you the point at which all the
graphics commands ‘

The home position of the graphics cursor is at
point 0,0 within the graphics window. At EMS
this puts it at the bottom left-hand corner of the
screen. We can adjust this position to suit by
means of the ORIGIN keyword. The syntax is:

Amstrad User July 7988

PROGRAMMING

—

The parameters xpos and ypos refer to pixel
coordinates, as opposed to text coordinates,
Unlike text coordinates, whatever mode you are
in the graphics coordinate system remains the
same. At EMS the bottom left of the window is
0,0 and the top right is 639,399.

To reposition the graphics origin to about the
centre of the screen you would issue the
command ORIGIN 320,200 - that's 320 pixels
across from the left, 200 pixess up from the
bottom. This point has now become position 0,0.

The size of the graphics window hasn't
changed, it still covers the whole of the screen,
So what are the new coordinates of the bottom
left-hand corner?

Well, they've become negative, —320,-200
That's 320 pixels left from home, 200 pixels down
from home. A picture tells a thousand words {sea
Figure I).

A window in space

A graphics window can be defined in the same
way as a text window, The difference is you can
only have one graphics window, Again, the key¬
word ORIGIN is used to alter the size and position
of the graphics window, but we need to add four
more parameters. That's six in all - enough to
frighten off beginners, so take the next pit nice
and easy. The syntax is:

ORIGIN stpcs^ypos,Lett,nght^tcD^oaitor

The parameters xpos and ypos are the same as
before. The parameters left, right, top and bottom
describe the boundary sides of the new- window.
The easiest way to remember what these six par¬
ameters should be is to split them into two
groups.

^(0,0) origin

i -320

-200

-(-330-200)

Figure I

The first group is xpos and ypos. These are the
coordinates of where vou want the origin to be
within your new window. In most cases you wil
want it to be at 0,0-the bottom left-hand corner.
If you want the origin to be elsewhere in your
window, then its coordinates will depend on the
size of the graphics window you are defining.

The second group of parameters describe the
graphics window in exactly the same way you
would describe a text window. The only dif¬
ference is that for a graphics window the num¬
bers can be much larger,

The parameters for the default graphics
window are 0,0,0,639,399,0. The first two - 0,0 -

*ICDE 1:BORDER

INK 0,T3iIHK T

J:im 2,26

ORIGIN 0,0,100

,539,349,58:CLG 1

ORIGIN 0,0,92,

535,35fl,?S:CL& l

GOTO 50

Listing!

tell the system that we want the origin to be at the
bottom left-hand corner, the next four -
0.639,399,0 - tell the system that we want the
left-hand edge to be at 0, the right-hand edge to
be at 639, the top edge at 399, and the bottom
edge at 0,

In the shadows

Let's oo a little prog r amming. One of the easiest
things we can do with ORIGIN is create a window
with a little shadow. We simply define a window,
dear it to black using CLG {the graphics window
version of CIS), then define the window again,
slightly offset from the first, and clear it to
another colour. This is shown in Listing I,

Notice that CIG takes a parameter, the pen
number of the colour we want the window to be.
It's a bit like a PAPER x:CLS rolled into one.

It's important to remember that we haven't got
two graphics windows here. The second ORIGIN
command overwrites the first just as a WIN-
DO'W#1 would overwrite a previous WINDOW#!
f we were defining text windows, We only have
one graphics window, which is a shame, but we
have to live with it.

Squaring up

Another interesting thing you can do with
ORIGIN is plant little DRAWings around the
screen without having to change the coordinates
in the DRAW commands. As an example we'll
plants lew simple squares (see Listing II).

Notice how quickly the 20 squares are drawn?
The other way to do this wouId be to MOVE x r y in
line 140, in which case the DRAW parameters
would have to be recalculated for each square.
This way we don't have to calculate anything so it
all happens that much quicker,

You could apply this technique to any shape or
shapes you wanted to duplicate m a different
screen position, no matter how complicated,

As a variation on Listing II, try Listing III which
is a very quick way to draw pixel-accurate filled
boxes in Basic.

Off the screen

Did you notice how some of the squares drawn
by Listings il and III went off the edge of the
screen? This isn't a bug, it is a feature that
restricts the action of the graphics commands to
the area of the graphics window,

It is easy ro think we can dra w off the screen by
defining an enormous graphics window, but we
can't, Although the CPC will let you define a
graphics window far larger than the actual screen

Amstrad User July 1988

area, in practice it only remembers the bit it land
you) can see.

So, if you defined a graphics window with
ORIGIN 0,0,0.32767.32767,0 and then tried to
PLOT 32767,32767, your computer would not
complain. It would simply laugh up its sleeve and
pretend to do what you ask. In actual fact it has
done nothing. The moral of this story is, there's
not much point in defining a graphics window
that stretches past the visible boundaries of the
monitor. Or is there?

All change

The 464 has no GRAPHICS PAPER command.

130 P10D£ 1

TIB FOR L&op-I to 23
120 x=R0imiK1tNt!*&39)
f30 y=R0U»&f»Nt*399)

U0 ORIGIN tfY
T50 G0SUB 200
160 NEXT:END
T W

200 mk 190,0
210 DRAW 100,100
220 D U\t 0,100
210 DRAW 0,0
240 RETURN

Listing It

Here lies the only reason I can find for defining a
graphics window off the screen,

The action of CLG x is to clear the graphics
window to graphics paper x. It is the only way in
Basic to change the graphics paper on a
464. Soyou would issue an ORIGIN
0,0,999,1000,1000,999;CLG 3 to change the cur-
rent graphics paper to the colour in pen 3. Then
you would reset your graphics window to
whatever St was before, probably ORIGIN
0,0,0,639,399,0, the default setting.

Similarly, the 464 has no GRAPHICS PEN
command, so the only way to change the colour
of the graphics pen from Basic on a 464 is to
PLOT a point or DRAW a line in that colour first.
So as to not spoil the screen display, we would
use a command such as PLOT 999,999,3 to
change the graphics pen to the colour in pen 3
then MOVE back to wherever we were before we
decided to change the pen colour.

This a highly unsuitable state of affairs and I
would recommend 464 owners who wish to mess
about with graphics to acquire a toolbox that has
the commands GRAPHICS PEN and GRAPHICS
PAPER in it

Well, that's ORIGIN for you. l J d have liked to
have talked a bit more about PLOT and DRAW,
and particularly their relatives PLOTR and
DRAWR, but space and time dictates all. Perhaps
another month. Tama.

103

MODE 0

110

F OR ioo p=1 to 20

120

x=R0liND (RND*639)

130

y=R0UND<RND+599)

140

CoLsH0UHD(RhDO3)

150

ORIGIN M,K,x-100,y,H00

160

CLG coL:NEXT:END

J JStifig fit

Page 47

STOCKMARKET

THERE'S NEVER BEEN ,4 BETTER TIME TO BUY!

STOCKMARKET enables you to record details of purchases, sales and
dividends of shares, unit trusts etc. Current share prices can be entered very
easily at any time for an automatic folio revaluation, Values of share prices,
indexes etc. can be recorded, listed and plotted along with moving averages.
Practice buying and selling shares. See if your intuition is right.

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

* Record full details of your portfolios of stocks, shares, unit trusts etc.

* Practice buying and selling and accurately record your progress,

* Up to fifty shares per folio. As many folios as you like,

+ Buy and sell shares with automatic calculation of dealing costs.

* Ten sets of dealing costs which you can alter as necessary.

* Record dividend yields and price earnings ratios.

* Update prices and automatically update yields and P/E ratios and
automatically recalculate individual share and total folio values.

* Record dividend payments and total dealing costs.

* Keep records of your cash as you buy and sell.

* List your folio, past transactions, dividends and cash accounts.

PRICE ANALYSIS

* Record share prices, unit trusts, indexes, exchange rates etc.

* Store up to 26(1 prices per share (e.g. weekly prices for 5 years),

* Plot prices and moving averages on a logarithmic or linear scale.

* Real prices supplied as a demonstration (inc. FT 30, B. Telecom),

* Use curves as a guide to the best buying and selling opportunities

Comprehensive forty page manual
Complete with demonstration account and prices

AMSTRAD PCW, PC, tBM PC & compatibles £39.95
AMSTRAD CPC (disc) £29.95

Prices arc all Inclusive mrklwldc. Send cheque or credit fird cumber
or rtbrptoiK 1W immediate delivery hy tint elm p«*■

38 Balcaskie Road,
London, SE9 1HQ
Tel: 01-850 7057

MERIDIAN E3

BBD

■DUST'

GET SMART!

BBD

•DUST-

COVERS

Protect Your Computing Equipment With
BBD PROFESSIONAL DUST COVERS

# In todays economic climate where equipment failure costs time
and money protecting your hardware from wear and tear is the
smart thing to do .and the smart way to do it is with dust covers
from the BBD Professional Range.

# Manufactured in top quality dark grey washable nylon and attrac¬
tively finished with red piping BBD covers are simply the smartest
protective covers available.

• BBD covers can be washed and ironed without tear of fading or
shrinking and will never crack or lose their shape.

• With all these superlalive features you might expect BBD covers
to be a little expensive. Nothing could be further from the truth.

COVERS FOR THE AMSTRAD CPC 464 - £7.50
COVERS FOR THE AMSTRAD CPC 6128 - £7.50

Please state Colour or Monochrome monitor

• BBD also offer a wide range el matching covers for printers from
only £5.00.

# These include Amstrad PMP 2000, 2160, 3000 and 3160,

Am si rad DMP 400C and LQ3500, and a selection from Brother,
Canon, Citizen, Epson, Star etc. etc. Generally, covers for 30
column printers are £5.00 and for 132 column £6.00.

GET SMART! GET BBD!

BBD COMPUTER DUST COVERS
The Standish Centre, Cross Street, Standish, Wigan

WN6 QHQ.

Teh 0257 422968 {Ext. 152). Fax 0257 423909

Caller and Deater enquiries welcome.

Utilities Unlimited!

We've brought together the very best non-games programs
culled from pest issues of Amstrad Computer User.

These clever programs cover animation, business, music,
games hacks, and much more.. Whatever your interest
there's something here for you - and at a very special price.

In some cases you wilt need to refer to the issue of ACU in
which the programs appeared In the list below these are
shown by + followed by the month. You can send for the
eight issues at the special price of £6.60 by using the order
form.

Elite Disc Hack — add millions of credits or Elite status
to your commander,

Justin's Scroll - discover how the experts program a
scrolling landscape.

RSX Lister- list all RSXes including those which have
been soft loaded.

Printer Spooler - carry on using the computer while
the printer is working.

Epson Dump - produce hard copies of the screen
display on the DIVIP2000^3000.

Organ “turn your micro into an impressive musical
keyboard.

ZX Loader - load Spectrum binary files into your CPC,
* July 1986.

Homespread - prepare your budget with this simple
but flexible spreadsheet. A May 1986.

Amgraph - produce bar graphs, pie charts from a
table of numbers. * November 1985 .

Diary - bring some order to your busy lifestyle (disc
only). + May 1985 ,

Mode 3 - Mode 0 with four colours in only 8k, with
accompanying demos. * January 1886 ,

Animator - become the new Walt Disney. Built-in
J tweening' facility. ★ April 1986.

Trace - re-direct the trace output to a window or
printer, + December 1986.

Sorcery Plus Hack - modify the sprites and increase
your survival chances. + January 1986.

Chord Finder - learn the difference between a suspen¬
ded and flattened chord. + September 1985.

Jet Set Willy Hack - infinite lives and a magic teleport
facility. * September 1985.

Double Height Print - expand your horizons with
these tall characters. * September 1985 ,

Druid was an un-
believably playable game.
^ Not suprisingly, so is
Druid 11. The plot has changed, and so
has the scerrerVr hut the gameplsy
remains basically the same, And
there's nothing wrong with that.

Irt many eyes Droid has already
□one down as a classic on the CPC.
The same fate is surely in store for

Enlightenment because, if anything,

I think it's a touch better than the

ONCE

druid. _

druid and hso spent no little time in
the hire of Firebird cleaning out a
maze with the aid of his fizzling fore¬
finger and helpful cohorts.

Alas, those days had long passed,
and now he wag reduced to the
usual Druidic mistletoe gathering
and rune-casting when one day a
deep voice spoke to him out of the
sky,

"Lo! The Time of Sequels is upon
us, as was forecast in the Book of
Marketing, Get thee hence to a
cassette ox disc, where thou shall
partake of Druid It or r as I shall
decree to make the game sell better!
Enlightenment,

And mark well that your finger is
In tip-top zombie repprng form; like¬
wise ensure the old pins are up to
prolonged scurrying. For many will
be the mazes, numerous the nasties
and multifarious the monsters.

that the theme from Star Trek?) the
voice faded to silence. The druid
chewed his beard, and made for the
game.

He found himself in familiar terri¬
tory. The gamesfieJd occupied the
top two-thirds or So of his monitor
screen ieven druids have CPCs], and
he could move fairly freely any¬
where where there were not trees or
more actively nasty objects. The
lower portion of the screen dis¬
played many things.

Perhaps the most Important
things were the personal strength
and zapping power meters. If either
of these two got too low, the druid
was in dead trouble. Also, as he wan¬
dered around the place, he could
pick up spells. These were displayed
in windows, and by pressing the
appropriate button on his druidic
keyboard he could select and make
use of such magic as he deemed
necessarv.

the
he

the r ext, he was under constant
attack'from the Forces of Utter
Unpleasantness.

To give an example, while he
colj d cut a swathe through the
hoards of Undead with a firestorm,
perhaps he should keep that up his
riystic sleeve for a more worthy foe
and just dispose of the minions with
the standard-issue gtgavolt pinky
pOwJdriver. For greater evil await¬
ed him at every stage.

Bur there were allies, or as Holmes
would say "elementals, my dear
Watson" Elementals are creatures
of pure element, where the elements
are the ancient Greek set of fire,
earth, air chd lager, sorry, water. Gy
selecting the Commodore logo
ferm, look guys, perhaps you could
have changed this for the Amstrad
version) r the druid h>r a druidic pal)
could fearlessly send an elemental
into combat. Fearless, because
while the elly soaked up the punish¬
ment the druid could be safely
hiding.

The most powerful spells must be
kept fop a very special purpose.
Trie re ore classes of monster which
are immune to anything but the
strongest magic; these demon prin¬
ces iaugh at firestorms and sneer at
water elementals, they even thumb

their noses at HM Inspectorate of
Taxes.

And the final spell, to be cast in
the presence of the Grand: Git of
Nasty Work Himself, Is the White
Orb. Do this and the land is free from
the curse once more and you have
won enlightenment. For you, yes,
even you, ere the druid .,,

Let's not beat around the burning
bush, if you enjoyed Druid/Gauntlet
with its mixture of mare and magic
then you'll enroy Enlightenment
even more.

The graphics are as good as Mode
0 get, the action suitably frantic, and
the various levels sumptuously
equipped with enough mystic
machinations to keep the would-be
Druid land friend - there is a two-
player option as in the original) well
and truly enmeshed.

If, on the other wand, you didn't,
then Enlightenment is unlikely to
snare your soul, instead you can
wonder why the hero's name
changes from page to page in the
slightly sus handbook.

Author: Paul Hutchinson hr
Firebird Gold

Price: £8S5 tope) €14.95 (disc)

Vm still SW99'™ f

Earth Lo,d ' ‘"AIre
Dtuid IU *»•■» f° *

lord But that wo «U P n0(IM i

Wh3t ATtLnih^etofi#
pe T Arth crucifix, WW

off the undead'* ul ^ h< , opY
fingers 0^ u C ' L . : £ a worthy

.pells? MigWf ment 15 3 r -__

sequel to Druto. \ij /

drft'Cuto Jt r s ahs nf ? e exce ^ n t it's
«" Pbv si it. pe0|) ' e

suitably impressed? ,m 1 **
^ dQh't know. Perhan* Vm
Wwith se qQeJ s Sf, lm 9 «ting

loo rnucp /,'k e ( f,„ ■ , a ' 0£> * « 'ittte

to haw I e—T.* W*

Irt Wee XA, 0f pef -

dofe logo, Veah T k., ,a Com mo.
y T ean, thgf must be \i

Amstrad User July 1988

Page 49

STAIRWAY TO HELL

I must confess that my heart sank as
I was handed this copy of Stairway
to Hall from Power House to review,
The cover illustration depicts Our
Hero, bearing more than a passing
resemblance to Indiana Jones the
morning after 15 pints of Gamble's
Old Sock Hotter, fleeing in horror
from what appears to be a pair of
highly agitated, red flannel Long
Johns hanging on a washing line,

Although fleeing from dubious
underwear would seem to be a per¬
fectly reasonable reaction, it is not
the kind of behaviour you would
normally expect from the macho-
hero stereotype,

As I waited for the tape to load, my
mind reeled. Was This the shape of
things to come, the beginning of a
trend? Is underwear about to do for
computer games what martial arts,
laser beams and mighty warlocks
have done before? Are we about to
see a string of titles like Corset Kil
lers, Jack the Stripper or The Af¬
fronts that ate Balham?

Fortunately for my sanity,, at this
point the tape finished loading and I
was soon able to discover that the
pulp magazine-style cover does less
than justice to the game inside.

Stairway to Hell consists of 15
screens, each representing a cavern
en route to the Earth's core. The

object of the game is to coiled the
treasure available in each of the
caverns,

A nice touch, al 1 but the last screen
can be accessed for practice by
using the left and right cursor keys.
The controls are simple - although
the presence of a suicide button
puzzled me for a while - and are
used to move Our Hero through
each cavern avoiding the various
nasties as he goes. And that, quite
simply, is that.

Simple though it sounds, this
game has a lotto offer,The settings
are many and varied. An old mine
working gives way to a surreal fac¬
tory, complete with vast,, thrusting
pistons; barrerLsno^srAes lead on
to steamy jfcotic

plants and
an underrate
nerof a scene st
Inferno - dancin
fire-belching craters,

The graphical realisation of each
of these scenes Is excellent and is
enhanced by the imaginative sound
effects.

Each screen poses a new set of
problems; obstacles to be overcome
and dangers to be avoided. Some
are more obvious than others,
although a good deal of thought is
required on each occasion. For

example, it was only after becoming
trapped in a jungle pit without being
able to move in any direction That!
discovered the reason for the
suicide button - a drastic measure,
but obviously a necessary one.,

The nasties come in various
guises, each terminating one of Our
Hero's five lives by causing him to
explode quite dramatically. Once
these problems have been figured
out, however, all that is required is a
bit of manual dexterity and a deal of
persistence.

That said, there are plenty of Chal¬
eo ges in this game and it is likely ip
hole your attention for some time.

Cue minor niggle. I was unable to
find a way of saving a game. This is
awkward in that ail the screens have

to be completed to succeed. It would
be helpful to be able to stare a
partiallycompleted game.

I found Stairway to Hell intriguing
Father than wildly exciting - The kind
of game that would appeal to those
who enjoy a puzzle rather than the
all action shoot- r em-up.

I doubt whether it is destined to
become a classic, but it is well worth
investing in if you enjoy a nwe con¬
sidered mode of entertainment or if
your joystick fingers are beginning
to stiffen with age and overuse.

Colin

Author; Kevin Stone for Power

House

Price: £199 (c$$$)

The Power House hasn't
exactly got a reputation
Tor major budget
releases, and Stairway to Hell isn't
going to get it one.

It's a competently programmed
platform and ladders game. There
are a few buggy poos, but nothing to
lose hair over, and each screen is
well designed and dithcuh to get
through. The action is fast but not
furious. The explorer isn't cute

enough. .

Stairway to Hell has the air of a
vintage wine about it-old and dusty
and probably best left on the shelf.

. Sts^ivay
10 only h as it

mode tet me wt' J be P f actice

•he a " bu >

are too. ' and ™ce they

would probably „, 0 fsars a 9«'t
toy high p) JC T n ftechatt a

«. with p 0 Hoi.L , 7^' As 'I
Itself in the martor 6 , SW 10 prove

toHeVotaK 0 '*!* Sai "wv

mouW breafce, B uf 1 fT 9fabe,he
and I hope it aloes, 0 * to -

Aii

! you sure this is a new

release? The copyright
message on the load™

' ha *e guessed this game
Lrf P r0 9 r 3mmed two years Bgo
Ladders and pJalforms go in and out

At tbe they

i w . m f°. b * °“t, but that doesn't
make this a bad game

tJHHTJ? He " is a 9uod solid
Jibing special, hut a lot
betteMhan some fve see n p oke

state dot " ’ he P ° WW

'2Q

iParrfi

Am$irad User July ?'988

PROTEXT Grows!

PROTEXT FILER - New Release!

This t. valuable program wifi keep your ad-dress lists or otter datafiles in good order.
Includes: datafile management from Within Protest; extremely flexible file sorting
program; label printing and mail mergi ng using the datafiles. Send SAE for full detai Is.

disc: £24.95

PROTEXT OFFICE - New Release!

Invoice printing program as used by At nor. Easily configurable tor your own require¬
ments. Works from within Pretext. Produces invoices/crsdif natesydelivery notes/
statements. Includes Pretext Pilar. Send SAE for full details.

disc: £34.95
PROTEXT

Protext is without doubt the most sophisticated word processor you'll find on any
home micro. Its ease of use and advanced range of features are normally only found
in business systems costing many times more. Widely praised throughout the
Amstrad press. Pretext is rightly acclaimed as the No. 1 word processor tor Amstrad
CPC owners.

* Super fast * Works with any printer * Flexible find and replace *

' Layout stored with text: normal & decimal tabs, left & right margins *

* Word count * Versatile print options; ind, headers/footem, page nos. *
“Extremely powerful editing features ,., superb search and replace *-AA
7 cant emphasise how good it is'-PCW

rom: £39.95, disc: £26.95, cassette: £19.95
PROSPELL

Typing and spelling errors are simple to make and frustrating to miss. Out by using
Prospell, you can produce documents that are error-free. Pros Del I is a spelling
checker that points out any odd words or dubious spellings.

* Checks Protest text id mem ory *

* Checks file on disc from Protext/Tasword/Amsword,'fJewWoTd,' , WordStar *

* Over 33000 words * Room for thousands more of your own *

* Up id 2000 wDrds/min * Find words and anagrams-great for
crosswords *

“Fast, efficient' easy to use -YC

rom: £34.95, disc: £24.95
PROMERGE

More than just simple mail merging for multiple standard fetters I
■ integrates perfectly With Pretext * Read data frqm keyboard or fife '

* Conditional printing so you can create your own personalised fetters '

* Use the built in maths functions to produce invoices etc. "

* Microspacing - to even out tte spaces between words * Typewrite/ mode *

* Link fifes together at orint time * Reformat while printing *

disc: £24.95

New MAXAM rom

MAXAM 1 V, - New Release!

At last, due to massive public demand, we have produced an enhanced
Max am ROM especially for Protext users. The editor has been taken out., and you
can now assemble your source code simply by typing ASM while it is in Pretexts
memory. Debugging is now easi & with comprehensive d lag nestles and the abili ty to
change register contents and resume from breakpoints. Otter new features include
load/save machine code from Protext'Maxam and extra assembler directives. Ah the
other Maxam features are included.

rom: £29.95
MAXAM

The classic Assembler/fcfonitor/Editor tor developing ZBG machine code.

* Plain English error messages * Disassembler * Memory editor *

' Menu driven full Screed editor * LMd/ttergefeave/print/find'Yeplace '

4 Mix BASIC and machine code * or assemble directiy Irem editor *

* Use the editor to edit BASIC programs saved, in ASCII *

This piece of software should be held up as an example of what can be done by
programmers who care r .. buy one nowl"- E & C

rom: £39.95, disc: £26.95, cassette: £19.95
BCPL - new low price!

Flexible, fast, easy to Seam programming language. Comprehensive I/O libraries
including graphics and sound. Example source files supplied, including a space
invaders game, foil screen editor and all the libraries. so page manual covers the
language and gives details of the libraries.

"Designed tor humans, not ccmpliters "-CWTA

rom: £29.95, disc: £24.95

UTOPIA

50 new commands available without having to load a program, including:

* Text screen dump * Graphics screen dump to Epson compatible printer *

* Disc utilities - disc format, disc copy, copy fifes, sector editor *

* Useful function keys automatically setup; easily define your own 1

* BASIC programming utilities * ROM management commands *

'Utopia is by tar the best utilities rom it's worth buying a rom board just to

plug it in-AMSCLUB

"Utopia seems lobe in a class of its ewn"-AMTix

rom: £29.95

C (6128. CP/M+)

Integrated C programming system. Full implementation of K&R standard.

* Floating point * 32 and 16 bit arithmetic * Optimising compiler *

* Linker * I/O and matt a libraries * Conditional compilation 4 Macros 4

* Editor is program mode of Pretext *

“In typical Amor fashion , they've taken their time and got bright *-AU

disc: £49.95, Maxam II + C: £69.95

PROMERGE PLUS

All the features of Promerge, plus:

* Edit two separate files in memory at once; copy blocks between them 4

* Background printing-alfows you to print and edit at the same time '

* Box mode-cut and paste any rectangle recreate newspaper columns *

"You'll have a set-up that can thrash any B-bit word processor for speed .. , and
even some i & bit programs for power"- PCW

rom: £34.95

ROMBO

All rom software /squires a rom expansion system, Its benefits include zero
loading time and maximum memory available for text, data, programs etc.
Remember: Utopia and the extra commands of Promerge Plus are not available
on disc. Fits CPC 464/664. SI20.

MAXAM II [6i2B, CP/M+)

Enhanced version of Maxam forCP/M+. Extras include:

4 Single stepping 4 Conditional breakpoints * Symbolic debugger *

* Editor is program mode of Protext * Macro assembler *

"Now the best gets even better^-ONlA CPC

disc: £49.95, Maxam II + C: £69.95

PROTEXT (6128, CP/M+)

Combines all the features of Protext, Promerge Plus and Proapeil into one
in leg rated program. German program & dictionary also avalabte (Prowort).
'‘Pretext is fust so fast and versatile once you ha va used it - it is tike putting Nigel
Mansell against a C5-PYATW

disc: £59.95

8 socket rom box; £34.95

Also:

Amster’s Cage Rom: £31.95

Qute simply the best Viewdata rom available ... ideal for Pres tel Menus. Easy
to use. Can be used to ugra.de your existing oomms software rom, Ptease state
which serial interface you have.

Releasing your Amstrad’s potential.

Model Universe (CPC)
Pocket Protext (CP/M+)
PC Pretext
Atari ST Pretext

£19.95 (disc), £15.95 (tape)
£29.95 (limited pe^od only)
£59.95 (5.25’ or 3.5" disc)
£79.95

Amor, Protext House, Walnman Road, Peterborough PB20BU. Tel: (0733) 239011 (24 hr)

All prices include VAT, postage and packing. Access/Visa/Cheque/Postal Order. Please mention this magazine when ordering.

Amstrad User July i 388

Page 5 7

I HAVE got to admit that
I'm a sucker for fruit
machines. There have
been a number of previous attempts
at simulating one on the CPC, but all
have failed rather miserably. This
effort from Code Masters, however,
takes the biscuit.

It features all the sights and
sounds of the real thing and the rock
and rolling reels are unbelievable.
Another game that shows exactly
what can be done on an Amstrad.

\W _

1 who pour mom

fnto fru,t machines out,
The Ohver Fvvrns have once a^;,

wfjf enT rfVr ,h0 ' J

'.nt,?h T* 0ea few idiots

Z S ee ere hin ^ it ’ Srha '^

VERY nice simulation
indeed but a little boring.
The trouble with fruit
...achine simulators is that the
element of risk is missing - you can t
lose because you're not gambling
with real money.

Out it's very nice to 'ook 3 t
listen to; the flashing lights, sound
FX music and speech synthesis are
ati up to Code Masters' very high
standard. There's not a lot to shoot
at, though, 14/20

FRUIT MACHINE SIMULATOR

THERE can be few contraptions
more addictive than the modern
fruit machine Now the Gsiver twins
have brought those same addictive
qualities to the CPC in the *orrn of
Fruit Machine Simulator. "Just like
the real thing", says the hype on the
box.

The features have certainly bean
packed in, At first sight the sheer
volume of colour and information
on the screen looks totally con¬
fusing. And so it is. until you actually
start playing. Then, as vou spin the
reels, feature ights flash and dazzle
your eyes as the sound effects
assault your ears. Just like the real
thing, I thought.

Up tu four players can play, each
taking a turn at inserting up to about

rocks a little as it settles before
stopping.

All the features you'd expect on a
real fruit machine are there - hold,
nudge, gamble - plus a host of extra
features that can be got at by tight-
ing up the cash-bash line.

The four extra features are Nudge

Box, Cash Box, Winning Streak and
Skill Climb, Each box flashes in rapid
succession, anc you stop it on one
by bitting Return.

The Nudge Box gets you the
amount of nudges it's collected, You
can take what's there or gamble for
more, Fruit Machine Simulator even
features a Compunudge (Go for it
George?).

Like the Nudge Box, lighting up
the Cash Box gets you whatever is in
the Cash Box, Again, you can
gamble it to try and win more.

The Winning Streak assures you
of a win every time you spin the
wheel. After each win lor loss, if you
gamble the win and: lose) you
gamble again to see whether the
Winn ng Streak is to continue.

The Skill Climb is a series of gam¬
bles up a money ladder. Each rung
gets faster and harder to win.

There is also a box that collects
money called Party T me. One of the
features of Fruit Machine Simulator
is again like the real thing -you are
not told exactly howto play it. You
know row much certain combi n-
et'ons of fruits will win you, and you
know which buttons to press

because they flash, but the features
are not explained,

Part, if not all, of the fun is finding
out what everything does, I never
found out what Party Time does.
Sounds good though.

Holds come fairly regularly, with a
single keypress caned, and there is
also a Mega Hold that hits you
randomly. Here the reels slowly
move about a little bit, giving you a
wider choice of fruits to hold.

When you run out of credits
[notice I say" when" not "if" - agai n,
just like the real-thing) you are
cordially invited to insert more
coins. Of course, you don't insert
real money says he quickly as little
bruvver drops a 50p coin down the
slots in the top of the monitor.

Fruit Machine Simulator also fea¬
tures some nice intro music, crisp
voice synthesis, and a Best Wins
Today table. Yes, you can walk away
with your winnings, in a manner of
speaking, but somehow I doubt if
you will . The ternptat ion to have just
one more go is just too much.

Authors: The Oliver lwins
Price: £1.93 tape

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PIRATES!

Treachery on the High Seas. No,
nothing to do with the Gulf war, but
the theme of Microprose's first
swashbuckling simulation.

Timed nicely to coincide with the
400th anniversary of Sir Francis
Drake's game of bowls and the
S pa n i s h A rm aria, you get The c ha nee
to escape your mundane 9 to 5 job
or 9 to 4 school day and become a
buccaneer on the high seas.

The game is set in a variety of his¬
torical periods from 1560 to 1700,
You can be any of four nationalities
and play on four different skill levels,
You are also asked what your per¬
sonal strong points are as a pirate -
you can choose between fencing,
gunnery, navigation, wit and charm,
or medicine.

To start off, you have to join a
ship, climb on to the deck and beat
The captain at a dueL Once success¬
ful, you take command of the ship.

Your adventures begin in port,
where you deal with the natives and
buy provisions for the voyage
ahead. You can also talk to the local
governor or the people in the tavern
who will ply you with information,
not all of which is useful

Any booty from previous voyages
can be sold to the local merchants.

and you can sometimes recruit crew
from the tavern,

When at sea, the lookout in the
crow's nest tells you whenever a
ship approaches. If it is of the same
nationality, you can ask for infor¬
mation I which is of the same quality
as that obtained in port).

If it is an enemy vessel, you can
bombard it with cannon fire, board it
and defeat the enemy captain in a
duel, after which the ship is yours to
be plundered or commissioned and
sold at the next port of call

If you're a pacifist or a coward,
you can always sad away unscathed.

As well as naval battles there are
land battles which tend to be very
difficult to win, and storm in gs of
ports which have lots of booty, but
are strongly fortified.

When a land battle takes place, the
ship's company divides into two or
three groups to engage Jre enemy,
Victory or ditoldfwwMjin the
type of terrg
morale of ead

This type of ba
game of chess, witlj
oeuvring to obtain the upper hand.

As you might expect, the object of
the game is to win as many battles
as possible, grab as much money as

you can and live to a ripe old age in
leisurely retirement
Of course, lots can go wrong on
the way: You can run your ship
aground, be on the wrong end of a
mutiny, or lose a battle or surrender,
after which you are imprisoned for
several months.

You can retire at any time, but the
only time you are forcibly pensioned
off is when you are too old to live
such an adventurous life - normally
after 10 years of active service
You have helpful friends during
the game, who will (tactfully} tell
you when you are getting past it.

On etiring, you can record your

achievements n a Hall of Fame,
which can be saved to disc and
reloaded for you to gloat over, and
wish you had so much money in real
life.

Pirates! is massive, with scores of
interconnected sections which have
to be loaded in from disc, slowing it
down. It's also expensive, but is sup¬
erbly presented and is very challen¬
ging, It should keep you going for
months, but do try it out before you
buy it.

AutAor.' StsUn W$lker for Mfcrgprose
PriC$: H9.95 \''6128 disc oniyj

Paqe 54

Amu trad' User July 1988

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Amstrad USGrJufy 1988

Page SB

O. J. SOFTWARE

FAST FRIENDLY SERVICE

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4 SIMPLE DATA ENTKT All team rwn-es are in die program Simply type in the reference
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HACKING

The word from on high

Vox goes up in the world to bring you more lofty pokes

H ELLO again, Hackfans Mover guess
where I'm writing from now? Weil, this
month we re skulking in the attic,
complete with cobwebs, old furniture, a
hissing water tank, and a few startled starlings.
Oh yes, the cats too; they've got designs on the
starlings [in the shape of tooth marks!, but Sol is
more liable to disappear through the ceiling of
the room below than chew on a fresh starling
drumstick.

Still, there is enough light in here to read your
letters, Including my first ever bit of hate mail
(that isn't meant to be encouragement), from
someone in Wolverhampton. They want to start
up a Children Against Hackers group, I have half a
mind to resign, but then that's all it takes,

The Qzzies have managed to produce some
more civilised literary talent - someone who
appreciates the column, Krache of Sydney Down
Under has got two pokes, and here they are.

The first is for Fairlight on der flippen flop pen
tiischken thingen. This is one of the shorter pokes
in existence, out requires a fast ESC finger. You
RUN J, DISC as normal, and wait for the pretty
screen to ioao up. As soon as the screen stops
■oading, hammer away on the ESC key until you
get the Ready prompt. Type: POKE
&6F7F,&C9:POKE &6&EB r &C9:CALL &93S0 and
hit Enter,

You should now have infinite lives and be able
to see ah screen drawing. However, you still snuff
it if you fall off the drawbridge ("He fallen in de
water!"!.

Krache seems to like Fairlight, 'cos he's given
another pokette which steps you up and down
through the screen locations, also on the flippen
ftoppen disch ken whate vers.

It's not perfect, as sometimes you are unable to
do anything in some locations. Being teleported
off into sections of code was not what the design¬
ers had in mind. Also, you tend to lose whatever
the inventory pointer is pointing at when you
teleport (this is known as a bug!. There is no
check to stop you from going above or be low the
existing location numbers, but it doesn't crash if
you don't overdo it.

When the game is running with this wee
pokey kins in, you can shift on to the next location
by hitting the "use item" key [that's 8) and than
the f9 key. By using 8 and f€, you can move
backwards. Of course screens do not always
follow in sequential order, but they're good
enough for Krache to have mapped the whole
game for him seif, and to find where most of the
items are. Anyways, yur 'tiz:

Run that little lot, stick in yer Fairlight disc, and
then hit the spacebar as requested.

I hear that back issues of ACL/are the negoti¬
able currency down under, so I'll whisper in the
Ed's ear and see if we can't ship you a few of the
ones lying about in the office.

Power for Fife

Ain't it amazing what you find while lofting about
in the roof? Here is the TV cabie running to that
noisy set owned by my neighbours {\ won't
mention names, let's just say that they're one of
those sorts that watches the late night/e ad y
morning film, at full volumei. Next to it is the
mains wiring for my bedroom. Shall \1
Nah, it'd run up my electricity hi IE. Mind you.

out old friend Adam Todd of famous Fife must
have a mighty big electrickery bill judging from
the state of the pile of poke he's sent in.

His Agent X II was written before the last one,
honest, The only espionage that went on was the
plot of the game (it's in there somewhere, prob¬
ably on unenlarged microfilm!. He put an awful
lot of work into it r and the mystery password now
displays the horrible multi-colour mega¬
message, so I'm going to hold on to it pending
popular demand. Write in if you want to see it,

His Ninja hack has such a neat user-friendly
bug that I've just got to include it: Jf your op¬
ponent hits you when your life line is low, he
hurts himself, so your score goes up I

NEPIORY l7FFF:tot=0

for u=mm rc um

mt a$:c=mrr*a£)

POKE b,c:tot-tot+c:NEXT b

, 50

IF tct<>fi20E6 THEM PftIIVT"ERIlROR":

call um

1 7d

DATA 21,4@,tf, 11,08,08,3e„16,ed.

al.

bc^f3,21

DATA 12,00,11,56,11,01, 09,00,ei,

b0.

21,3b,80

DATA 11,52,04,01,34,00,^1,21,

If, 11,00

1 180

DATA bf,01,52,06,6d,b0,21,06,bf

,e5

,{9,11,40

1 110

DATA 00,01,52,05,04,c5,05,21,fib

,06

,T1 ,a2,02

DATA 01,1b,0B,ed,b0,2U1,02,J6

,cd

,21,36,a4

1 110

DATA 21,36,02.,t3,40,00,18,20,21

,?7,22,2f

1 140

DATA 59,3e,71,12,31,59,if,21,1e

,77,23,77

150

DATA 3Z,24,59,2a,b0,00,t9

Checksums are included for the hard of typing.
The best checksum error I saw was in the R&D
department of a certain electronics firm, It said:
"Errir reading s*stim RIM.....", i digress, as has
become natural for someone paid by the page,
from telling you more about the game.

You collect six shields before a door will open
in the grey wall leading to Akuma's chamber.
There you get the seventh shield, and return to
Torii by the sea. Cue the flashing screen:
"Welcome home the mighty conqueror".

His Xevious poke is still lacking truly infinite
lives, so we’ll give h i m a wh i I e I on g er on that one.
Couldn't you nobble the hit effect table, Adam?
That would fix the objects that register more than
five hits.

The Infiltrator poke is very nice, and makes the
game much more playable (like you make it past

►

1 R:1 Cache's Fair.-ght heck

U Dr.4 19,30,11,12,7c,01,2c,0fl^d,b-0 /

10 tt-0:fOft TO &A044

20 READ

90 DATA 80,93,e9,cd,47,7d,3a,01,e3,sa.

30 POKE a,c;Et-tt+d:N£XT a

5 J

40 IF tt<>7182 THEN PSIfcT tot it uror

'30 nn Z8,0a,tb,67,20,15,fd,35,34,fd

qg asain !!? Check the data ; END

,35

45 KH DEF 4?,1,l59:KEr 159/run^CHRS

TIB DATA J4,f d ,3 4,34,06 ,(-0,70,23,78, cd

Ul)

53 C LS: LOCATE 1,15:PRHT PRESS SPACE

120 DATA 76,Bl,c3,95,6e,(#d l 7e,0c,e6,0f

0 A ft''; PEN 0

,00,00,00,00

63 DELETE 10-120

130 OPENOUT "d :MEHOUtT S?7CiNC9E 1:1KK

73 DATA 21,7f,6f,36,c9,2t,eMMM*, ‘

0,0;INK 2,25;IMIt 3,6:flQPEB 0

140 LOAD ' 4 cp, bi n': CALL Um

■ T ---—-—- -*-—-

Arris trad User July ] 988

Page 57

the first part). It's a multi-load poke, so Adam has
good reason to be proud of it:

; 10 mm imi-.im tot=0

20 FOB b-S-9E30 TO 49059
30 BEAD ai:c=VftU‘S’+ai)

40 POKE b,c;tot=tot+c:NEXT b
50 IF tot<>SZZD5 TH£S| PAINT 'ERRROR A6
ANEkSTQ'P
da CALI £903B

73 DATA 21,69,£6,11,0f,f6,3k69,e6,22,

a, n

£0 DA7A ed,53,b2,02,ed,43,2M3*fM3/
c9,af

90 DATA 52,03,31],32,4e,6U^MM^
4c,65

100 DATA 32,6i,6?,52,a0,3a,c5 1 r0 , 0,6d,21
,be,cd

110 DATA 22,00,67,3e,t9,32,25,67,c3,f4
,65,21

120 DATA 17,90,11,20,bf,01,32,00,ed,&0
,3e,c3

130 DATA 21,00,90,32,«2,39,22,e3,39,21
,ff,ab

140 DATA 11,41,00,c3,af,!9

The tape itself is in four parts, (the same thing
happened to me once when my Sony Walkman
brake down], the first part being a helicopter
shoof-em-up r but with an armourdad helicopter
and unlimited missiles.

Next bit has five lacked rooms in it which
unlock when you put a pass card in the control
room. Photograph the rooms that you unlock,
and hope your boss remembered to put film in
the camera.

The third part is much the same as the first, and
in the fourth and final bit, you have fun in the lab.
The pass card opens up the lab, which contains
an invisibility pill. Blow up the lab and rescue the
doctor, but look outfor the mines, as they can still
get you.

Well done Adam, we'll send you the usual
bribes,

On a slightly less gamesey note, Richard Evans
of Oyfed has sent in two pokettes for the disc
version of Print Master, Not the public domain
poster designer ana, but the one by Siren that
pumps-out various fonts in quad density graphics

on an Epson on yer 464.

Unfortunately, this little package always
underlines in black. This is a fat lot of use to man
and beast when you are printing in inverse, "cos
the background is black already, in nit,

Enter the first pokette, Program I, which
patches the MCODE BIN file so that underlining is
always in the same colour as the text The poker
includes a checksum end won't write anything
until the checksum matches, but make a backup
in case of acts of God,

The second bit, Program II, again fiddles about
with the MCQDE.BIN, and in so doing tacks a
couple of new RSXs on the end, NLQ and PITCH.
Any idiot with two brain cells to rub together is
going to be able to work out what these do, so get
typing.

That'll create a new file called
NEWMCODE.BIN, which is a wee bit bigger than
the original MC0DE.BIN. so any memory-tight
programs mIght cause problems. Look out for the
absence of bars in front of commands too: both
me and the typesetting department have this
awful habit af leaving them off, (Notso -it's our
fife transfer program that zaps them. Eti!.

The command t NLQ, 1 switches an the
someth i n g -not-u n Iike-som e wh ere ■ near - letter-
quality mode, and l NLQ.O turns it off again. This
only affects text sent to the printer via the
iLPRINT command. More on the PITCH
command a little later,

To load in both the new RSXs and the normal
Print Master ones, use a program looking ike
this:

5 HEHGRT 893FF

10 LOAD 'nsn'nccce ,bi n ,IU30fl

20 LOAD standard',£9400

30 CALL £4000

Slightly modified there (you got the MEMORY
address wrong, Richard}, but basicslly all his- own
work.

The ides of them is that some af the fonts are a
bit thin and seedy- looking; I PITCH,, 12 packs 12
characters to the inch and PITCHES gives the
usual 15. To create the new size extra spaces are
added between letters, but these do not take into
account anything you may have done.with
underlining and/or inverting.

Both of the new RSXs work with the SIZE text,
and all the other RSXs,

As you'll probably want to use the new com¬
mands in the Ascprinl program, here are the
changes to allow the new commands to work
from that. Change line 30 to read:

30 mm 32767:L0AD "nebr!ncode',£A000;

LOAD ‘'standard',49400 : CALL 5A00fl;LO

AD "sdump’,89000;LOAD qtode5.bin

and add these two new lines:

5 35 IF L£ff$(aI,4>=W THEN NLQ.,VA
L(NIK(aS,6,in

53d IF LEFTS ta5,6k’PITCH’ THEN PIK
MAUNIDtCaS,B,2>5

Richard's last program was a Maxam to Basic
loader program. Nice, but we're working on one
that checksums the listing both ways and spots
missing lines, It will be published in due course
for all you lot to use. Thanks many Richard.

In the meantime, do not hesitate to send in

your self-checksummed listings, however large,
to me at the Hacker's Haunt at ACU.

Now then, while 1 pop down the loft ladder to
hack into a chunk of prs-frozen chilli and slip it in
the microwave, you can hack into Justin's latest,
aka:

1 FL^irg Shirk disc Justin

2 ’ Insert disc and run routine.

13 nm honour -d^EMCnr S 3 ff
20 tot=0

10 FOR n=£BE00 TO &6E2C
40 READ a$:a=VALfi>aS)

50 POKE n,a :tot £ tot+a
60 NEXT r

70 IF tot<>315E THEN PRINT'WhQops, you
had better thee* the data. :END
Bfl INPUT ‘Insert Flying. S h a r < disc and
nit return.kai
90 LOAD ‘disc’:CALL £BE00
100 DATA 21 ,47,04,11 ,00,10,01,20
110 DA T A G3,ed,b0,3e,c9,12,52,47
120 DATA 04 J cd,00,04,cd,00,10,2t
130 DATA 23,be,22,e3,04,t3,67,04
140 DATA 21,00,00,22-,70,3b,22,71
150 DATA 3h,c3,00,c0,4a

1 ■

North

Star tape Jjsiir

PASTE[R]

NODE

■NENORT 12345

tot-0

FDR n

TO £9D

READ

*S;a=VAL n +bS}

POKE

n,a: to:=tocfra

HtV

IF toto.1497 THEN PRINT

T h e r e 5 sOne

t hi

ng wrdrg yitil the date.'

END

LOAD

',64100

CALL

£60

100

DATA

21,00,41,11,03,01,

01,03

110

DATA

02,£d,b0,21,94,00,

22,05

120

DATA

0k c 3,00,01,21,30,

16,22

130

DATA

0c,29,c3,S4,03,4a

Solly has been in the freezer again: I can tell
'cos the fast-freeze compartment is filled up with
mice cubes. No matter, see you next month, and
remember: July 4th is Independence of America
Day.

PnntHaster ULINE

INVEST fix

tJ,Evans 17-3-68

CL5

PRINT PLaee Printflaster disk in

ive A and 60 INPUT

then press.

re*

urn

,dumiyS

A ;L0AD 'Acode.bin”.

|A 030

FOR addr* &A0D1 TO

6A0DD

HEAD dl ; POKE add r

,VAL(T+d$)

100

total = total ■+ YAL

ET>dl)

113

NEXT addr

120

IF Total oU8t THEN 160 error

130

SAVE 'mei>dt',b,BA00

3,6140

140

PRltJT 'data OK _ sa

ved nev versi

*o disc'

150

END

160

PRINT there is an

error in the

ta _ no"

165

PRINT 'alterations

nade to disk.

170

PRINT 'Correct the

data and run

a i n”

163

END

190

DATA 7e,4f,3a,4c,e

1,bl,4f ,3a,14

r«1

,*9,00,00

HACKING

10 Basic pokor jure gram to 9 i v e two

110

READ ayteSimji^VALCB'+bytei)

670

DATA ci,c9,00,cS,eS,3a,3l,a2

20 'neu rs* coimands to Print Ha b. te p *

120

J 0KE adcr+ : J .num;5gm-5 Jii+nun

660

DATA fe,01,28, 41,3b, 12,at f l t

10 f

130

NEST f

690

DATA 00,28,05,ed,0s,a2,18,03

40- The neu connands art;

140

RETURN

700

DATA c o, J c, 3 1,e5,Cj,cd,e9,a0

45 '

350

bLoc* 1

710

DATA 2f,29,a2,06,04,cd,bt,a0

50 M l^ ,r. r = T (on) or 0 (off)

360

DATA 8aM«,2,td,?1,23B

720

DAI A 21,Ba,a1,06,04,Cd,bt,aa

60 ' PITCH,m it.=12 or 15

170

bloox 2

710

DATA cf,e1,3a,12,a1,fe,00,28

65 '

DATA Ga01c,6,cl,52,a2,cl,45,a2,833

740

DATA 05,col,1Ja,aZ, 1B,03 ,c(Mc,739Z

70 R.J.Evans 31*3*88

a Lac *: 3

753

block 12

80 '

400

DATA 6a022,-17,0

763

DATA 4a1o6,64

100 HEMORV &9FFF : LOAD mcode^&A00fl

410

a Lae k 4

770

DATA al,cd,e9,a0,21,2e,s2,06

110 DEFItT a~2

420

DATA 6a0dl,3,cd,9b,a1,521

780

DATA 03,cd,o1,a0,e1,d,c9,3a

120 FOR oLock z 1 TO H

410

block 5

790

DATA 12,a1,fe,0B,2M5,ttf,0a

110 PRINT ’reading b l 00 k ;bLo-tk;CHRS{

440

DATA Sa046,-9,0

300

DATA a2,18,03,etj,fc,a1 ,ed,e9

13);

450

oLock 6

810

DATA a0,el,c1,c9,c5,e5,7e,d6

140 READ aodr:SEAC‘ Length;sum=0

460

DATA £a08o,5,cd,9b,a1,18,18,569

DATA 20,cd,7b,a 1,21,10,f7,el

150 IF UncthcU T-EN COSUB 250 ELSE GO

470

block 7

310

DATA cl , c9,t5,e5,3a ,4b,a1,3?

SUB 300

460

DATA 8*890,-24,0

840

DATA 4c,a1,7e,f5,20,20,07,3#,8669

160 RE AO check

490

□look 8

350

b Loch 11

170 IF simochecic THE^i SOTO 220

500

DA"A SaSol, 13,7e,4%3a,4q,a 1 ,d 1 ,4f

360

DATA Ga2l8,64

IBS NEKT block

510

DATA 3a,H,s1,a9,00,00,1164

870

DATA 00,32,4c,a1,le,20,d6,22

’90 PRINT 'data GK-Scvi no ft tt as ME wh 1

520

block 9

383

DATA cd,7b,a1,23,1fl,efi,*1,e1

COD E.SIN

510

0A“A M15, 4,gMMI,00,473

890

DATA c9,Tb,4a,Bt,0d,0a,1b,6#

200 SAVE 'newfltode.btn ,b,GA000,8278,6

540

block 10

903

DATA 01,01,Id,c0,dd,7e,00/e

A003

550

OAT □ 4a Hb, 77,00,00,4 c,5 0,5 2

913

DATA 31,23/35,fe,03,23,01 ,c9

210 END

560

DATA 49,4e,d4,49,4e,56,45,52

920

data 5c,32,31,s2,c9,3d,c0,dd

220 error J r data

570

3A T ^ Gi,53,49,5a,c5,55,4c,49

913

DATA 7e,00,fe,0f,28,05,fe,0c

136 PRINT ‘There is a checksum error i

530

DATA ie, c5,4i,4c,d1,50,49,5^

940

DATA 28,1l,c9,3e,10,32,7a,a 1,6045

n block ;blcc k

590

DATA 43,c8,00,d5,c5,3a,7a,a1

950

bLock 14

240 m

600

SATA 47,e5,d1,05,19,13,fd,c1

963

DATA 4a256,12

250 FOR i=0 -0 ABSCLength)*!

610

DATA ol,c9,TB,cd,bb,a0,c5,e5

970

DATA 4f,32,9a,a1,3e,7ti,32,fQ

260 POKE iMdgr,0

620

SAT A la,9a,a1,fe,00,28,10,47

980

DATA a&,32,le,a0,o9,3e,14,32

270 NEXT i

630

OAT A la,4c,a1,4f,3a,14,a1,a9

990

DATA 7a,a?,3e,04,32,9a,a1,3e

280 RETURN

640

DATA cd,2b,bc',10,f3,10,11 ,e 1,8922

103E

DATA 60,12,f0,a0,12,3e,a0,c9,3572

290

650

block 11

100 FOR i z 0 "C Length-1

660

DATA 4al98,64

The

truth

about

TELEX

Havt , much due* It cost

to ao on Telex' _ Telex machine The cheapest will

° uti3¥

55Sff5S5r35»*™ ,#

into * TOlOX # ” i,C/,/ "”V |jniC 3 tjo n i software (see the

^sSS-SriS^r

^ggggaSi

=S!2SS5S^SSSr-

aassgg5saasa=J®w - «

«=rSS^--a.--

ssa »- -, - -«- - sk^-s

i ssscsje 2 * *?*- -

So now you can check whet^ business efficiency?

anywhere, anytime How s

4rn.sf/ad Lfeer JuJy

Page 55

The Map

Level 1

Level 3

Page 60

Amstrad User July 1988

HA CKiNG

Z__ 7

To aid you in your task you have a variety of weapons,
including missiles, seeker missiles, bombs, bouncing
bombs and mines.

In each room there is a different type of bug with
hostile intentions towards you, Each is best disposed of
with a particular weapon. Zap them and they
sometimes transmute. Pick up the new shapes for extra

weapons, energy, time or points.

Most rooms contain a problem to solve. You may
have to pass unscathed through some machinery, or
duck and dive past missiles being hurled at you by an
indestructible enemy placement.

A final word of warning: Save your shield until you
reality need it!

Level 2

111

mmmw

JmmjynL

it- <r

H ’

S™>- Wpjy

A ms trad User July J 988

Page 61

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iwni

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PloEt PH4 PW*E>HJ r ; 3 >iflc= 75p. 4 or mor e Li Ovnrseu Cl 30 |Litr"liirc - ^EijijuGa|i]iCi
PERIPHERALS Cl per item ChHfir=na* FJ0O I nwn nju

PW=W vr*i dteque^P.O.-s U>: MapIrfP, 0^*,^ J3 LHHe & eodi,

Q>c-h*i i tr, W-iyur,, f ^ J Y T

( - -\

CALORY CONTROLLER

HELPS YOU CONTROL
YOUR CALORY INTAKE

Facilities — search for op to 399 listed foods - add to/
change list — display cals/oz — keep/save/add to daily
record - weight record - list/total ingredients &
values - choose daily cals - report cals used - print¬
outs - metric/imperial versions - ideal for slimmers

SAE for full specification
For 6128 only
£10 inc p&p

CHRISTIAN NUTRITION

4H Barke Road, Seafar, Cumbernauld G67 1AL

Pago $2

Amstrad User July 1983

4 S%. e

Arii rw-> i n m n n ~

These two exciting compilations ^

bring together the very best games listings ^

which have helped to make Amsfrad Co/npofer
User the best-selling Amstrad magazine in the
country, And we've kept the price down to thank you
our readers, for all your encouragement and support.

EXCLUSIVE

HFH lVl1

Z*l ^

Racer

Roland Takes a Running Jump , game

A colourful fart-.*® « the h g^v praised series

S^KSJS"yS2S-

Includes extra screen data.

Racer u- J ,W» ^heel of this Grand Prix racing
car and take it for a spin round the tortuous test
track. A nifty bit of programming.

r ipctric Eddy, Gaiaxians' Revenge, Trench
$&£ZX£ Amthe!lo! < FrarUic Freddie
id Electric Fencing

" wu “'» ■

SpJatch

we molv U HWn e th« th Ll° ne bef0rfi? Balderdash,
Wjto JlnrZ 1 aet ( ° the Cafrots - " d

Greet frur> for all the family™ ^ Squirrels ^

DoCrazy Le0S ,
Caverns. wSSStaS P «

? nb “«- <**«■ of the Cars QuchJ | n ^ L r k ’
Frootee'.' PIUmberdroid . Crawler (6128 only) and

Roland Takes a
Running Jump

REAPER

Tape <Each volume comes on two casettes) _ _ £7.95

Only £ 2.95 with a new subscription or subscription renewal

Disc_ _ £9.95

Only £3,95 with a new subscription or subscription renewal

All games work on Amstrad CPC 464 , CPC
664 and CPC 6128 computers unless stated
otherwise. You can list and adapt all the
Basic hies - an excellent way to improve
your programming skills.

EXCLUSIVE

READER

£4.95

Binders

You r Amstrad Computer
User is the ideal source of
reference for every user of
Amstrad computers. Keep
your magazines tidy and in
tip-top condition by using
our top quality binder.

The Amstrad Computer
User binder holds 12
issues. Each binder is
black with the logo
embossed in silver.

Amstrad is a registered trade mark
of Amstrad Pic.

The answer to dirty discs

Drive a:Read fail

Retry, Ignore or Cancel?

Does this message spook yog. It could mean that a disc which
contained hours of work should! now be retired for use as a
beer mat and the information on it has no chance of being
recovered. There are many reasons why this can happen,
foremost is the possibility of having dirty disc drive heads.
Cleaning kits have been available for mainframe and 5 V 4 rr
floppy drives for years but only now has the 3" disc cleaning
kit become available. For only £9.95 you can ensure that your
heads don't get clogged with the oxide which rubs off from
the discs.

Each cleaning disc is made of a special fabric which should be
soaked with it's cleaning fluid. This simple maintenance need
only be carried out occasionally to ensure a reduced number
of retries and more reliable disc access.

New subscribers to Amstrad Computer User can benefit from
an extra special offer. When you subscribe you have the
chance to buy the disc cleaning kit for only £6.95.

Dustcovers

DMP2000/30001
Printer £3.95

CPC range
Keyboard £3.9!
Monitor £5.95

Keep your equipment free from dust and
grime with an Amstrad Professional
Computing dustcover, made from clear

pliable vinyl and bound by strong red cotton and sporting the logo.

DMP 2000/3000 Printer Cover.......£3,95

CPC 464/664keyboard cover .......... £3,95

CPC 612B keyboard cover....,...... £3.95

Green screen monitor cover .....£5.95

Colour screen monitor cove*- .. . .. £5.95

PC 1512 keyboard and monitor set.....£9.90

PCW 8256 keyboard, monitorand printer set.. £1 1.95

Back issues

198S — January: Tranter -
map and play guide, Basic tutor
on defined functions, typing
tutor listing, Cherry Paint
review. 32 line screen mode.
February: Matchday II full
review, Kermit comms advice.
Driller, Saracen and Jack the
Nipper II. Basic On . . . Error.
WWII listing. Printer advice and
adventure help.

March: Dan Dare II - full map.
Family tree software review.
Scruples from Virgin. Educa¬
tional software the truth home
to roost, Microstuffer - printer
buffer. Mastering INSTR,

April: Cage rom the ultimate
viewdata tool, Sasic Tutor on

interrupts, Flying Shark, PAW
adventure creator, Hewson's
Anarchy, Part one of Pat
Winstanfey's writing adven¬
tures, Iso hot listing.

May: Part one of Jill Lawson's
art lesson, Adventure writing
adding a plot, ATF full review,
Brainstorm pokes, Basic Tutor
On Gosub, Polar listing.

June: Part one of Auntie John's
machine code, Basic Tutor on
boolean logic. Adventure
writing final part, Micro Music
Creator, CP/M + on rom, Rodos
xtra, Nebulus full review,
Cybernoid, Gothic, L.A, Swat,
Revenge of Doh, Driller sol¬
ution, Creeper lizting, Al nought
and crosses, Amstrad
espionage.

Amstrad User July 1938

Page 64

Only £9 95
- or just
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if you subscribe to
ACU on the form
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ORDER FORM

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Commence wfih —

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£15 UK

£25 E urqpe Ind 'Eire
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8000

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S3)

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i3niy avmiterbla if aeoxrpanied hy stAJecrption order or renewal
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Clearhead

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£6,95 £9 95 B112*113 '—f

‘Only avafoftfe if acconjisnied by subscription Ofd 0 r or renown?

Rainbird Advanced Art Studio

CPC 464,6646129Owe
DkTronic* fl4k Ram
Disc + Ram

wahsub* Without sub
£16.95 £16.95 61406141

££9,95 £31.95 81429143

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’ Bundles 1 w 2 UK £4.95. Europe 6 Elm £6.95. Overseas £13.95
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Back numbers of ACU

UK £1,50, £2.00 Europe* Eire, £3.50 Overtax
1996

January $036 1 1 March 6040

February acuifl

April

904

PC ] May
t r i jtflw

$043

Dust covers

CPC 464/664 keyboard

CPC 6126 keyboard

CPC range green ftoeen

CPC range cotour monger

DMP 200Q3000 Printer

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PC 1512 Keyboard * colour monitor sen

PC 1512 keyboard * rnonc monitor aei

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total

PLEASE PRINT IN BLOCK CAPITAL LETTERS

Send 1o; AmslFUd Computer tisw, FREEPOST,
MaccfesflaJd Cheshire SKID 4YS
{No Biairp needed If posted bn UK) Ffeas* atom29 days for deUvery
—— — Order tf any time of the day or night —

__ Telephone Orders 0625 67H20

FaiQrrferer

0625 B79966

Orders by Pimttf:
Kay *69, then *14566383

MkxoUnkfTaiBcam Gokf

72lMAGOG1

ftwlf forget to give your name, sddrern end credit card number

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Name—__ _

Address-

ACU7

Page 65

The Least
Significant Bit

NOT content with his Wogan appearance, Alan Sugar has made a
further bid for superstardom with the DTf advertisements to promote
British forays into the European market. Alan is uncharacteristically
restrained thanks to the script having been written for him and his not
having time to learn the lines until the day of the shoot
The whole thing was film ed d ou bl e qu i ck wh i I e the workm en stopped
hammering away at Amstrad's new reception. Strange realty, some bits
of the Amstrad building haven't seen a lick of paint since the day the
company moved from Tottenham and yet this is the third reception

facelift in three years.

In the DTI advertisement Alan Sugar complains about the problems
of having to design different computers for different markets. What he
forgets to say is that even in 1992 the continentals won't have learnt
English and will insist on having the manuals in their own language.

LSB has heard of an Amstrad compromise. The European machine
should have a French AZERTY keyboard, meet German radio emission
standards and come with an Esperanto manual.

Hacker artist hacked

Our best wishes go to John "'Alex" Alexander the artist who illustrates
the Hairy Hackers Haunt and many of the articles. We hope the broken
arm is soon on the mend. And our worst possible wishes to the driver
of the car which hit him on a Zebra crossing.

m m

Iflllll

SCREENVISION

TURNS YOUR
MONITOR INTO
A COLOUR TV!

ATTHE AMAZING OFFER PRICE 0F M* w

Door to Doorlnsured delivery add CG INCVAT

USE YOUR AMSTRAD CPC464, CPC664 &
CPC6128 MONITOR AS A COLOUR TV SET!

Screen vision is 3 modem State-of-lhe-Ari' TV Tuner which simply connects
to your monitor, using the existing lead and converts it to an outstanding
colour television

Screenvision has more features than any other TV Tuner and costs less'
Each lunor has seven pre-select push button channel selectors, separate
controls tor brightness, colour, tone and volume and has. built in Speaker.
C olour a nd Au tom atic gai n control.

Unlike otner producls. Screenvision also connects to a host of other Monitors
Should you change your system.

DEALER & EXPORT ENQUIRIES WELCOME

► MICROCOMPUTERS -gg
I & ELECTRONICS LTD.

VAIM AVE NU E MOOR PA RK ■ INO RTHWOOD ■ MIODLE S EX ■ EN G LAN D
TEL 09274 20&S4 TELEX 929224 SCREEN G

QUALITAS PLUS

is the latest version ol the mo&1 powerful print enhancer available for the Amstrad
CPC. It's invaluable for adding style 1o your correspondence, or that professional
look to newsletters, reports, price lists, even your curriculum vitae! dust look at
these features . , .

• Real near-letter quality (NLQ)! Printed using the same method as NLQ
printers: two passes with a rmcro-iineieed, giving norma I-heigh! characters

• Superb fonts! Five business fonts are supplied (two pica, one elite one italic
and one proportional). Each tom can be modified or new toms, created with the
easy-to-use font designer.

• Several prnnt modes? Each font can be printed in hatf-widlh, double-width,
subscript, superscript, underline and emphasized using standard Epson
codas. And double-height is also available!

4 Powerful lormattinB I Lines can be juslifiad with equal spaces between words
(micro-justification) and hard spaces can be embedded. Tables can have up
to 16 columns o) proportional text.

• Go-resldsnl with ho$t prog ram! Use all the )»werfut features of your word
processor, eg print formatting, character redefinition, and even mail merge (try
doing this with a desktop publisher!) You do MOT have to save tiles to disc first!

• Very compatible! works with nearly all Epson-compatibles with double- or
quad-density graphics including the CPSU and the MT60. but not the Hft$
Compatible wrlh Amsword. Masterfite 111, Mini Oft ice II (CPC6123 only), Protest
(exoepl CP/M), Tasword. and! your own BASIC programs

• Expandable! Add an 5-bit pnmer port for even better results. 40 extra fl-bn
fonts are available, including OkJe English, Script., Tasword 2nd character set
and European languages,

Gualitas Plus costs just £14.95 (disc). Tape version Cl2.95 (CPC464 only). Up¬
grade from earlier version possible Please stale your computer, printer and word
processor UK orders post iree (Europe add El, elsewhere add £2 airmail) Fast
mail order with 14-day lull refund jf not entirely saiisfied" guarantee (statutory
rights unaffected; Trade enquiries welcome.

If you want to give your printer a new lease of We Ouaktas can be recommended "
- Computing wish ttra jAmsfracf CPC 8/87.

SEVEN STARS

Seven Stars Publishing, Dept A,

34 Squirrel Rise, Marlow, Sucks SLY 3PM,
Tel: 062B4 3445.

Page 68

Amstrad User July 1988

1 ,7f r ‘ Tv, :: A WORTHY SUCCESSOR TO

{TF U* THE EVER POPULAR MATCH DAY

j ffj FOOTS ALL SIMULATION -

Mf Hi WSJ l^Sl niT A GAME WHICH HAS

^ ~ i ‘ REMAINED IN THE flfADERS

*.VS£* T CHARTS FOR 3 YEARS!

Written once again by Jon Hitman and Sernie Drummond this NEW Match Day is the
of all the customer feedback and advice on how to create the pinnacle in computer soccer.
l 1 * 3 * * * 7 it yours cm against the tPU or with 2 player t-tut! league of tup competition with unique code - save facility,
head volley and kick fusing the kick meter; to move the bail from player to player with automatic
deadball set ups and goalkeeper control,

DIAMOND DEFLECTION SYSTEM™ ensures realistic ball
ricochet and the action comes with
full music and sound FX.

7 I f you want the very best in foot-
' ball for your micro then there's only
one choice... MATCH DAY IJ with
multi-menu system makes the home
computer come alive.

SPECTRUM

■AMS TRAD

COMMODORE

j 5 rfie registered trademark of Ocean Software Limited

t**5&#*

ATARI ST

COMMODORE 64

AMSTRAD CPC

Available from ail good computer game stockists, or by mail order from: Palace, The Old Forge. 7 Caledonian Road. London N1 9DX
Send cheque or postal order for £S.99 (C64, Amstrad cassette), £12.99 {C64 disk). £14,99 {ST. Amstrad disk} plus SGp PS.P.

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